Huge upside from all time low level21 Jan 2019 14:06
Martin Eales, CEO of Rainbow, said: "We are pleased to announce the maiden JORC-compliant Mineral Resource Estimate for the Gakara project, on time and on budget. The Mineral Resource, which is based on only four out of the 28 identified targets within our licence, shows over 1.2 million tonnes of ore, a considerable deposit in its own right, and provides further evidence that the Gakara deposit is a world-class source of rare earth oxides.
"Three of the areas are high-grade vein stockworks, and include 12,491 tonnes of ore Resource at 55% TREO. These alone will provide over two years' head feed for our planned ramp-up to 5,000t concentrate, and we will of course continue to explore these deposits further.
"The Kiyenzi deposit has been confirmed as a very large, lower grade deposit, which ties in with the airborne and ground gravity results previously announced. The currently modelled deposit amounts to nearly 1.2 million tonnes of ore at 2.2% TREO, and may well be related to a carbonatite source. This deposit is open in all directions and is an extremely exciting prospect as it presents a new opportunity for Rainbow to further develop its mining and processing capabilities.
"These results will provide us with confidence in our ability to obtain near and medium-term sources of ore, but more importantly point to the existence of a truly unique deposit, which we will continue to explore in the future."
JORC 2012 Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate
Earlier in the year, Rainbow announced that it was working towards the completion of a maiden code-compliant Mineral Resource estimate for its Gakara Rare Earths project (the 'Project'), to be published by the end of 2018. This maiden Mineral Resource estimate, which is now complete, was undertaken on behalf of Rainbow by Benzu Minerals (Pty) Ltd ('Benzu' or 'BM'), and has been reported in accordance with the guidelines of the Joint Ore Reserve Committee (JORC) 2012 code.
The most recent previously-published technical report relating to the project by Rainbow was the 'JORC Competent Person's Report for the Gakara REE Project, Burundi' compiled by The MSA Group (Pty) Ltd ('MSA') and dated 30 September 2016, which was included in the Prospectus published in connection with the Company's IPO on the London Stock Exchange in January 2017.
Since then, a considerable amount of work has been carried out at the Project, including greenfields and brownfields exploration, drilling, mining, ore processing testwork, modelling, and ore processing and concentrate production. This work has produced a significant amount of new technical information and data that have materially changed the understanding of the ore deposit and the REE mineralisation it contains, and has enabled the calculation of a maiden Mineral Resource estimate.
Since 2011, Rainbow has kept detailed maps of over one thousand REE vein occurrences across its mining licence, from which it has defined 28 "prospects" or "targets" (which