Pilot Plant Update

Latest results support expectation that Phalaborwa will be one of the lowest cost magnet rare earth projects in development today

• Primary pilot plant campaign in South Africa ran for an extended period allowing for key optimisation opportunities, with expected resultant benefits to capital and operating costs
• Separation pilot plant campaign in USA is ongoing – separation of Nd/Pr has now reached over 95% purity via an optimised first stage chromatography step, with the process expected to reach the targeted purity of 99.5%
• Piloting campaign to date supports our expectation that Phalaborwa will be a low-cost producer of separated rare earth oxides in comparison to the global peer group
• As part of the work to deliver the DFS in H1 2025, Rainbow plans to release an interim report in H2 2024 to update the economics of the Phalaborwa project reflecting the optimisations delivered from the pilot test work campaigns, footprinted against the Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”), and to allow for commencement of project financing

News in full

We caught up with CEO George Bennett at  the Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town. He provided an update on Rainbow’s operations, but also tells about the many uses of rare earths and why they are so important in the global energy transition