Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd (LSE:RBW, OTC:RBWRF) CEO George Bennett talked with Proactive's Stephen Gunnion about the rapid progress at the company’s Uberaba project. Bennett explained that Rainbow Rare Earths was able to reach the economic assessment stage in record time, thanks to its innovative approach that avoids traditional drilling. "We didn't have to drill the resource to come up with a production profile," Bennett said.
He detailed how the company leveraged its experience from the Phalaborwa project, as both projects involve extracting rare earths from phosphogypsum waste. At Uberaba, the waste is generated from a phosphate hard rock mined by The Mosaic Company and processed into phosphoric acid, which concentrates the rare earths into the waste residue. Bennett highlighted that Uberaba's grade is 20% to 30% higher than Phalaborwa, making it an even stronger project.
Bennett noted the long-life nature of the project, supported by Mosaic's existing JORC-compliant resource base. The company expects the Uberaba project to operate for at least 15 years, with the potential for much longer operations. The joint venture with Mosaic is structured as a 50/50 partnership, with plans to build two processing modules capable of handling 4.50 million tonnes of phosphogypsum per year — effectively doubling the scale compared to Phalaborwa.
He emphasised that Rainbow Rare Earths has managed to keep development costs low, with the economic assessment costing just $230,000, compared to millions for traditional mining projects.
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