Name of the Project
Phalaborwa Rare Earths Project.

Location
Limpopo, South Africa.

Project Owner/s
Rainbow Rare Earths signed an agreement with phosphate mining company Bosveld Phosphates in June 2023 to ensure it obtains 100% ownership of the Phalaborwa project. 

Upon completion of a definitive feasibility study (DFS), the unincorporated joint venture (JV) will be transferred into an incorporated JV company and, at Rainbow’s election, Bosveld will transfer all assets required for the project into that company. 

Project Description
A preliminary economic assessment (PEA) has confirmed Phalaborwa's significant potential as a low capital intensity, high-margin, near-term rare earth development project. The project has a total Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant mineral resource estimate of 30.4-million tonnes at 0.44% total rare-earth oxides contained within two phosphogypsum stacks, derived from historic phosphate hard-rock mining.

Rainbow Rare Earths will extract the rare-earth elements (REEs) using a proprietary continuous ion-exchange and continuous ion-chromatography plant process, developed in conjunction with K-Technologies, in the US.

The PEA, published in October 2022, is based on processing 2.2-million tonnes a year of phosphogypsum over a 14.2-year project life to deliver 26 208 t of separated magnet rare-earth oxides (REOs). The project will produce all four of the key REEs used to create permanent magnets (neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium), and is believed to have the highest basket price of any rare earths project – $175.89/kg – outside of China, while the average processing cost is estimated at $33.86/kg.

Potential Job Creation
The project will create numerous employment opportunities during construction and an estimated 300 direct job opportunities, excluding contractors, suppliers, vendors and consultants. Priority will be given to the people in the Ba-Phalaborwa area who have the requisite skills and experience. Rainbow will give preference to local contractors and where contractors are imported from other areas, Rainbow will encourage the employment of local labour.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has an after-tax net present value, at a 10% discount rate, of $627-million and an internal rate of return of 40%, with a payback of less than two years.

Capital Expenditure
$295.5-million.

Planned Start/End Date
Production is expected to start in 2026.

Latest Developments
In an update on the pilot plant operations in June 2024, Rainbow reported that “excellent" results had been achieved on the large-scale, continuous pilot plant at Mintek, serving to confirm the basic process flowsheet originally set out in the PEA.

The key findings from the primary pilot plant campaign showed:

• an overall recovery of rare earths of 66% versus 65% used in the PEA.
• a 50% reduction in the expected heating energy requirement, from a leach temperature of 40°C set out in the PEA to 30°C.
• the first-stage impurity leach effectively controlled the impurities to the desired level, with about 23% of the recovered rare earths reported to the impurity leach solution.
• the subsequent rare earths leach was reduced from three stages in the PEA to two stages.
• the continuous ion-exchange pilot plant delivered excellent recovery, impurity rejection, and rare earths upgrading, with the resulting product being suitable for direct feed to the final continuous ion chromatography separation process.
• solid-liquid separation tests conducted on samples from the primary pilot plant operation yielded excellent thickening and filtration results, allowing for the removal of six counter-current leach thickeners out of 12 from the circuit.
• the use of lower-cost materials in construction as another optimisation, expected to reduce the capital and operating costs.

As part of the work to deliver the project DFS in the first half of 2025, Rainbow plans to release an interim report in the second half of 2024 to update the economics of the project, reflecting the optimisations delivered from the pilot testwork campaigns, footprinted against the PEA, and to allow for the start of project financing.

Key Contracts, Suppliers and Consultants
ANSTO Minerals (plant processing testwork); K-Tech Inc (REO separation technology and partner in developing plant processing flowsheet, managing the back-end of the pilot plant at its US facility); Mintek (managing plant front-end in South Africa); and METC Engineering (production of the PEA and engineering work for the DFS).

Contact Details for Project Information
Tavistock Communications, on behalf of Rainbow Rare Earths, tel +44 20 7920 3150 or email rainbowrareearths@tavistock.co.uk.