The future is very bright1 Nov 2019 08:03
RAINBOW RARE EARTHS – FURTHER OPERATIONAL PROGRESS AT GAKARA
October 30, 2019
Rainbow is the only African producer of rare earths as well as having one of the world’s highest-grade rare earth element (REE) projects at 47-67% Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO). The latest operational update was accompanied by news that the CEO and Chairman had between them acquired more than £32,000 worth of shares at 3p, which represents a premium to the current share price; and speaks volumes.
This latest operational update brought investors up to speed on production, the exploration programme and cost control. It provided further evidence that new CEO George Bennet is really getting to grips with the Gakara Rare Earth Project in Burundi, in which Rainbow has a 90% stake. George is in the midst of ushering in a brand-new strategy which could well be transformational with the move to mechanised mining on a far larger scale.
Not only is Gakara blessed with being one of the highest grade REE projects on the planet, but it has a total of 30 exploration targets – which represents extremely good fortune. In a gold licence, companies would be delighted to have 5 gold targets and very happy if 3-4 targets turned out positive.
At Gakara, it seems that pretty well the whole area is mineralised. The mining permit extends over an area of 39km² where so far more than 1,000 occurrences of rare earths have been discovered on the surface. As exploration work at the main Kiyenzi deposit has revealed, mineralisation has been found to exist between the high-grade veins. Across the licence area, REEs have been discovered at each of the 30 targets. In fact, 7 of these targets were the sites of colonial/artisanal mines.
At the same time, concentrate from Gakara contains very low levels of both uranium and thorium, which means that it is readily shippable on the open seas, with concentrate already successfully exported to China which rigorously enforces strict limits on the level of radioactivity. These negligible levels of uranium and thorium are a really important factor and will serve as a key differentiator between Rainbow’s REE concentrate and that of its competitors. Being benign, this gives the company a big advantage as in most global rare earth deposits, uranium and thorium are key elements that must be extracted, requiring additional expensive steps in the processing which adds large opex and capex costs to any project. Not much has been made about this factor, but it is likely to have large ramifications moving ahead.
The big transformation to becoming a bigger scale mechanised operation means that Rainbow needs to get involved in painstaking geological work to establish a drill area that is able to support the new exciting strategy. The plan is now to define a larger orebody to JORC standards and then develop a mining plan to extract a far larger quantity by mechanical means. An exploration programme is currently being developed wh