London South East/focusIR presenter Donald Leggatt interviewed George Bennett, CEO at Rainbow Rare Earths (RBW), and asked him about the Memorandum of Understanding just signed with the NYSE-listed The Mosaic Company, the world's leading producer of concentrated phosphate and potash.
AIM-listed Rainbow Rare Earths is a producer and developer of the rare earth elements driving the green energy transition, with rare earths used to produce permanent magnets for wind turbines amongst many other industrial uses.
In particular, Rainbow are successfully testing a process flowsheet for the extraction of rare earths from two phosphogypsum stacks at Phalaborwa in South Africa. And although no two phosphogypsum stacks are identical, George believes the material in the stack at Uberaba in Minais Gerais, Brazil is very similar to Phalaborwa as it also comes from a hardrock carbonatite phosphate deposit.
As George says; "Because of our success at Phalaborwa I've been looking round the world for other similar projects and I saw this opportunity with Mosaic in Brazil. We signed an NDA some time ago and had a site visit in March this year. We established that this is a very very large phosphogypsum stack in operation since 1980 I think. We estimate it could be twice the size of Phalaborwa, and very importantly it's still a live stream being fed by a mine with a mine life of 25 years."
"At Phalaborwa we get very high grade rare earth concentrates in the phosphogypsum, and we have created a processing plant there with a successful front end flow sheet, and a back end flow sheet utilising K-Tech technology which allows us to process the slurry and to release the high economic value. At Uberaba we have identified a very similar asset where you have hard rock carbonatite being mined, the phosphate is concentrated into a slurry, pumped into a phosphoric acid plant which adds acid and heat, and at Uberaba it has produced a massive gypsum stack there which we estimate is twice the size of Phalaborwa."
"A huge amount of this IP and tech which we've got is applicable we believe to what we have now in Brazil with the Mosaic opportunity."
"The front end at Phalaborwa has already been commissioned" said George, "and we will be producing our first mixture of sulphate within this quarter (which sells at 60% of the fully seperated rare earth price) and by the end of this quarter we will have successfully done the final derisking of the flow sheet which uses the K-tech processes at the back end pilot plant. A back end pilot plant is being built close to the K-tech facility in Florida, the sulphate will be shipped there and separated."
Rainbow Rare Earths (RBW)