London South East interviewed London-listed Rainbow Rare Earths' (LSE:RBW) CEO George Bennett just after RBW released interim results to 31st December 2020. George described progress as 'a successful turnaround year'.

The CEO says he expects the Burundi Gakara trial mine to break even after the first quarter, as the business continues to mechanise the operation and focuses on growing the output. "By the year-end the business will be strongly cash-flow positive at current pricing."

"Pricing had been circa $50,000 per tonne in December, and now is $88,000 per tonne currently, and we are targeting between 180 and 200 tonnes per month of Rare Earth concentrate by the end of the year." said George.

And what can we expect next from RBW?

"We want to drill the Gorkara resource next year, moving from exploration into the inferred category and prove that we have enough resource to target 10,000 tonnes per annum of Rare Earth concentrate, a tenfold increase on where we are from next month." Explained George.

"We will be releasing a JORC on the Phalaborwa asset very soon, we have released our assay results which confirmed the initial metallurgical results which were released to me by Sasol. We will be releasing a PEA on the Phalaborwa hopefully by July this year, and by the end of the year a pre-feasibility study on the asset. The JORC work and the PEA is funded by the current Treasury which is significant."

"By the end of the year we will also have the new fleet at Gokara plus all the plant upgrades and the optimisation of the pilot plant in place, which is also funded out of the current treasury, and I'm very, very pleased to announce that."