Rainbow Rare Earths has announced the following update on the development of the Phalaborwa rare earths project in South Africa.
George Bennett, CEO, commented: “Workstreams for Phalaborwa’s DFS have commenced according to plan and the pilot plant is on track to commence operations this year, producing separated rare earth oxides, as part of the overall project timetable which envisages commercial production from 2026.
“This is a remarkable fast-track for any rare earths development project globally, considering we commenced work at Phalaborwa in 2021.
“Successful operation of the pilot plant will give further confidence to our plans to leverage our proprietary technology, with the aim of targeting opportunities to produce rare earths from historic phosphogypsum stacks, or as a by-product of phosphoric acid production, on a global scale.
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“Today’s resource upgrade is the result of infill drilling which has confirmed our expectations that the project’s two phosphogypsum stacks are homogenous and consistent in grade.
The potential for Rainbow to provide an environmentally responsible, near-term source of the magnet minerals critical for global decarbonisation has attracted interest from strategic global investors and discussions with funding partners are progressing well.”
The Phalaborwa PEA released in October 2022 confirmed the strong economics of the project, which has a base case NPV10 of US$627 million, an average EBITDA operating margin of 75% and a payback period of less than two years.
Rainbow is currently working to advance the project to DFS and a key part of this is the implementation of a pilot plant operation, which will commence commissioning in Q2 2023. It will produce enough separated permanent magnet rare earth oxides for testing and marketing purposes in off-take discussions with potential partners.
The company continues to make good progress in discussions with strategic global funding partners to finance the balance of the pilot plant operation at Phalaborwa and further progress the DFS.
The unique and innovative rare earths processing flowsheet designed for the Phalaborwa project, which will use CIX/CIC technology to deliver separated magnet rare earth oxides, has been developed in collaboration with Rainbow’s partner K-Tech.
This proprietary CIX/CIC process replaces traditional solvent extraction technology for the separation of rare earth oxides, which can be a convoluted process and also associated with environmental risks.
The CIX/CIC method is therefore safer and more environmentally responsible, as well as coming at a significantly reduced capital and operating cost due to a simplified flowsheet, which can be accommodated by a single hydrometallurgical processing plant.
The key workstreams for the DFS and pilot plant have commenced and are progressing well:
Work has started on the front end of the pilot plant, which will comprise the main phosphogypsum handling circuit that will produce a mixed rare earth sulphate intermediate solid material. An initial bench-scale programme is in progress to confirm the pilot testing parameters.
The front end of the plant will be executed at Mintek, which is one of the world’s leading technology organisations specialising in mineral processing and extractive metallurgy.
The back-end CIX/CIC separation circuit, which will be piloted at the K-Tech facility in Lakeland, will produce marketable separated rare earth oxides.
By separating the pilot process between two different centres of minerals processing excellence, we expect to benefit from:
METC Engineering, the minerals processing engineering firm and one of the key authors of Phalaborwa’s PEA, has been engaged to work alongside the Rainbow team to fully define the required engineering scope for the DFS.
US-based global gypsum experts Ardaman and Associates, Inc., a Tetra Tech Company have been engaged to conduct test and initial design work for the new stacks upon which the benign gypsum will be deposited.
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