Rainbow Rare Earths Phalaborwa project shaping up to be one of the lowest cost producers globally. Watch the video here.
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Rupert must feel pretty confident if he's networking with offtake partners before all the test results are in
Rupert Verco is attending the REIA Global Rare Earths conference in Tokyo to network and engage with potential partners and the broader rare earth community.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3rp8ySW43M
Cobra Resources is conducting promising lab tests on rare earth element recovery from Boland ore using in-situ recovery (ISR) techniques, showing high-grade samples enriched in heavy and magnet rare earths.
The company aims to scale up its ISR process and produce a marketable rare earth carbonate product, working with partners like Water Cycle in the UK to optimize the process and achieve low-cost production.
Canada also moving to block China's access to RE's. Small amount, interesting though. Australian co.
https://www.mining.com/web/canada-blocks-chinese-rare-earths-deal-in-trudeau-led-crackdown/
A good summary SS , again thank you for taking the time.
Seems the ducks are finally lining up , I like the fact Rupert is at a REE convention in Japan.
Expecting further RNS update later this month
ATB
Very impressed with Rupert, thank you for posting SS
Carters, wanted to reply to your points too, as you seem to be new to the company:
1) "It's one thing doing lab tests but does this work at scale?" The conditions from the testing sure look good so far, the company made a bold decision in that mid-2022 drilling campaign to prioritize Boland as completely new target at the time over the Thompson exploration target (81-233 mt), based on their understanding of the mineralogy. Many other companies would just have taken a "let's just maximise the mt of REE in our MRE" approach, indeed many REE companies do just that, and leave considerations about how mineable the resource is for the future (think AR3 for instance, but even MEI). The fact that Cobra have had the mining approach, ease of extraction, cost of extraction, recovery rates, in focus from the very start, and opted for focusing on "the right resource" rather than on "increasing the MRE as much as possible as quickly as possible" is imo a very positive thing, and with Boland a lot of boxes were ticked indeed that they had always been open about.
2) "Are we to believe that this tiny company is going to do a world first for mining rare earths?" Alone? Maybe, given that they do have a lot of ISR experience in uranium across the team, both Rupert, and also David Clarke. The conditions for ISR surely aren't given everywhere and they have found a resource in that unique paleochannel that seem as good as they can be for it. Not alone? It should be easy enough, if they show proof of concept & scalability, they already have the partnership with Watercycle to optimize flow sheet, and Australia is home to several multi-billion $ market cap REE miners, think Lynas.
3) "The million ounce gold mine went up in a puff of smoke" Not really, but focus has shifted to REE, rightly so in my opinion given there's likely a 130 km^2 resource. But if you're looking for a pure gold explorer, this isn't the investment for you at the moment, granted.
4) "The share price has done nothing since listing over 5 years ago". Well, rare earths prices decreased a lot since 2021, these go in cycles. You can say the same about most other London-listed rare earths companies for that reason, Rainbow, Mkango, Pensana, all of them are pretty much at listing SP, if you go on google and put Max on the graph. The good thing with Cobra is that the board and related persons have huge skin in the game holding over 30% of outstanding shares, raises have been with small or no discounts (one was at a premium to SP), and spending is very conservative, that's a nice thing to have for an exploration company.
5) "everything is hanging on this highly speculative method of mining rare earths. Near £10m market cap and no precedent for whether this ISR is workable for rare earths." What makes you say that exactly? Market cap was close and at some points higher than now before Boland was the focus. If ISR works, this is off to the races with huge upside, if not, there's other methods of
Thanks Lord Chaos.
Rupert and others on the team have ISR experience so I’m confident they can pull this off.
I think it all depends on the overall system. If PPM is higher, then recoveries can be lower, etc. But 50% was a benchmark that was mentioned; I think they are assuming it will be higher.
Lord Chaos, this might be a silly question but what if it’s below 50%?
Project not feasible?
So far it all appears to be coming together but until Cobra get the full results back even they won’t know if ISR is feasible.
Fingers crossed it is.
Yes, investing in this company is not without risk. But look at the upside if it's successful. It's your decision whether to take a punt or not.
It's one thing doing lab tests but does this work at scale? Are we to believe that this tiny company is going to do a world first for mining rare earths? The million ounce gold mine went up in a puff of smoke. The share price has done nothing since listing over 5 years ago and everything is hanging on this highly speculative method of mining rare earths. Near £10m market cap and no precedent for whether this ISR is workable for rare earths.
I hope you are right LordChaos.
I have been following this a long time and hoping that it will deliver but I have had patience for Cobra that I didn't have for other companies.
Look forward to the next RNS
You are right, Chaos, more than 50% and we have a viable mine. This leaching process does appear to leave a sizeable about of the product behind, possibly similar to the old fashioned dig it up separate and carry away the concentrate. With the leaching method will ‘they’ do a second leach to access more of the product?
I am paying the price for not paying much attention during chemistry lessons at school!
Frog
For once I timed a top-up, last Friday, perfectly.
...at least momentarily.
If it greater than 50% then we have a commercial mine and the ppm's are now stella.
OK, accepted. This tells us that the relative permeabilities are about the same - and the lixiviant takes approx. 6 days to flow through the 0.5m sample. But how much is leached out ........ about 2 weeks and we find out!
LC, it's not like there's no context on it given its mentioned these rates are comparable with operating uranium mines using ISR. I suppose it makes sense to go into more detail only when the full results of the ISR study are released by end of June
I'm sure a presentation will be put together soon, but it all sounds pretty good, with a backdrop of 270,000oz of gold which we can understand, ie over $600m
I'm trying to decipher what a 'permeability rate of 0.12 pore volumes per day' actually means - why can't they just express things in layman's terms?
The Dy & Tb grades are ridiculously high if there's zones of this high-grade heavy rare earths footprint.
Let's keep in mind that these are by far the most valuable rare earths oxides.
Pretty excited to see the ISR study results within the next 2 weeks according to the RNS, not gonna lie.
Another good RNS, it's all coming together
Also, Rupert's words to me at the recent shareholder's event - if the ISR results are better than 50% and we can demonstrate we have at least 100Mt, then we have a commercially viable mine. I think we will have both of those in spades over the coming months.
Yeah, the only thing that a buy marked as a sell means is that you got a very good price - as your buy was below the displayed mid price (or I guess looking it from the other side, you could also argue it means the mid mark is too high vs where actual market is, if that bid/offer is in line across brokers).
Anyway, hopefully ISR results in the next weeks, if those are good, Boland looks very very promising indeed, with the modelled area of mineralisation (which has been supported by the historic sample reanalysis results), sky is the limit if they can show "We can mine this in an ultra low-cost way that also has less of an environmental impact than conventional mining". You guys have been talking about JVs below, which...if ISR looks like a go...I don't think Cobra would need, both upfront capex and opex would be manageable, and South Australian and federal government could well give grants, and offtake agreement with some credit line would do the rest. Pretty sure that some of the multi-billion REE/mineral sands companies in Australia would try to get a piece of it if ISR works and scale is there, so JV could be easy enough in that scenario, just saying i don't think for Boland they *need* a JV.
However, in the medium term, JV could have other advantages, let's not forget that after Boland, there's also a highly prospective tenement in Tasmania adjacent to an ionic REE resource, there's more to do in that Narlaby paleochannel than just Boland, and there's several prospective IOCG targets that rightly for now aren't the focus, but could easily become relevant quickly once there's either revenue or JV.