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. 

This updates the original project co-development agreement, which envisaged Rainbow’s earning a 70% interest in Phalaborwa further to the completion of a prefeasibility study. 

Rainbow has also been granted a call option to acquire the remaining 15% of the JV owned by Bosveld, in return for $7-million of equity in the company, at any time from October 31, 2023, to December 31, 2023.

Upon completion of a definitive feasibility study (DFS), the unincorporated 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 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 rare-earth elements 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
Rainbow Rare Earths has announced progress with its Phalaborwa pilot plant, with REO separation now under way at K-Technologies’ facilities.

This back-end plant process uses continuous ion exchange and continuous ion chromatography to produce separated REOs, which replaces traditional solvent extraction that uses toxic and flammable solvents and requires more than 100 separate stages.

The process will produce neodymium and praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, used in permanent magnets.

Some bench-scale testwork undertaken by K-Tech is already showing positive REO separation, in line with expectations. K-Tech has started to continuously run the rare earth separation processing plant.

Meanwhile, the front-end pilot plant, based at the Council for Mineral Technology’s facility, in Johannesburg, has reached successful completion of two planned campaigns, from which about 5.75 kg of mixed rare-earth carbonate has been shipped in five batches.

The pilot plant process involves a continual optimisation to deliver the most efficient final flowsheet for commercial-scale operations. 

The front-end plant will produce increased volumes of mixed rare-earth carbonate to ship to K-Tech over the course of the first quarter.

As part of the front-end process, Rainbow has worked with K-Tech to establish the optimal mixed rare-earth product for the back-end plant.

The additional front-end plant process removes unwanted elements, providing a higher-grade feedstock for the back-end separation unit.

The inclusion of this extra processing step does not add any significant capital or operating expenditure to the front-end flowsheet, but reduces the quantity of mixed rare earths to be processed in the separation circuit by about 40%, resulting in capital and operating cost benefits overall.

Rainbow CEO George Bennett has said that, while the company has experienced some delays from the original timetable, these delays have not affected the integrity of the process flowsheet. Delays included further beneficiation of mixed rare-earth sulphate to produce a cerium-depleted carbonate, as well as two mechanical issues at K-Tech that took longer to resolve than expected over the holiday period.

The process flowsheet, however, is progressing as planned.

K-Tech CEO Tom Baroody has said that separation of the Phalaborwa material is progressing as planned, with the delivery of four separated REOs on US soil being a major milestone in the development of an independent supply chain of critical rare earths in the West.

Key Contracts, Suppliers and Consultants
ANSTO Minerals (plant processing testwork); K-Technologies Inc (REO separation technology and partner in developing plant processing flowsheet, managing the back-end of the pilot plant at its facility, in the US); 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.