Rainbow Rare Earths CEO says Brazil project could replicate Phalaborwa success

I know you're watching Proact. I'm joined by George Bennett, the CEO of Rainbow Rare Earths.

George, very good to speak with you. You're sharing a sitting on all time high this morning

after that economic assessment suggested UberRabba could replicate the success of Palabora.

What makes this project so attractive from a cost and margin perspective?

Well, thanks for having me this morning, Steven. Yes, I'm pleased to see our shares

at an all time high. And yes, definitely the UberRabba project, not good, but it will replicate

the success that we see at Palabora. Similar to Palabora, we expect in reverse from

waste residues called fossil gypsum as a result of phosphoric acid production in Brazil.

The beauty about this project is that it's a large feed. In other words,

the phosphoric acid production facilities are still ongoing for another 30 plus years.

So this is a very, very long-lifed project with the average grade of the rarest

in the fossil gypsum at above 0.5 percent. Tiorio, which when you compare that to

only clay projects, is a significantly higher grade with very, very easy, well, we've got no mining

costs. This is what sets at the point. Similar to Palabora, we don't have to drill in blouse,

we don't have to haul, we don't have to crush in more, we don't have to do some

mixture with concentrate before we crack it. This comes straight from the phosphoric acid

plant feed into our process implant, extraction plant, and as I said, all those costs associated

with the typical hard rock mining project, or even the highly clay project, we don't experience

with this project in Guberoba. How does that change the economics

and the risks then, George compared with traditional rare earth mining?

As I mentioned, most traditional rarest mining projects have your geological risk,

you got your mining risk, and then you've got a whole lot of processes to get it to a point where

a rainbow start with extracting the errors. We start with a direct acid leach, and then we're

going to continue to ion exchange circuit, and we'll be going into solvent extraction very similar

to what we're doing at Palabora. All those typical risks associated on that part of your

mining is not apparent with this project, and that's what makes our Abedore margin

seeing a circuit 69 or 70 per cent Abedore margin, and with a very low operating cost compared to

other rarest projects. George, you're partnering with Mosaic, it's a major global first

lines of producer. What is their involvement bring in terms of expertise, infrastructure,

and also speed to development? Yes, I'm very proud that we are partnering with a global

fertilizer business. I think they're the number two in the world. In Mosaic, they're a multi-billion

dollar business, and we've been able to secure this project, and we'll be going to the pre-fisability

stage now, and then going into a joint venture agreement on positive outcome of the pre-fisability

stage during the fundamental fund feasibility study. We've also footprinted our partnership

shielding ratio of 51 per cent for Mosaic and 49 per cent for Rainbow. This makes it a very,

very significant project that's very very accretive to Rainbow and not only in terms of MPV,

but also in terms of earnings for Rainbow. What Mosaic bring to the party is that this is an

established site rather than the middle of the sugar cane belt in Brazil. We don't have to apply

to move any villages or to remove any steam rainforest or Amazon jungle. As I said, it's the middle

of the sugar cane belt. It's a brownfield site. It's largely permitted for a lot of the

reagents that we'll be using on site. It's a really fancy, similar to Peloboa, and once again,

we will be, we have really good land allocated within this site of the Elberabra project in Brazil

and for our processing plant. They bring a huge amount of infrastructure to the project. They bring

a huge amount of, for example, shortening the time frame in terms of permitting that we expect,

and you'll have seen that we expect this project to be targeted production in 2030. This is

exceptionally fast-paced for any mining project, not that we are mining project per se, but

for bringing any other project online, most of the projects that are being developed in the world

have already been around for 15 to 20 years, and most of them still haven't been built. We started

with Mosega in this project in 2023, and we talked between 2034 production circa seven years. This

is extremely fast. The reason why we can do this is because we're bringing all the RP that we've

learnt at Peloboa to bear on the project in Brazil, and this makes for much, much shorter

timelines and it makes for a very low capital intensity project as well. Once again, our capital

intensity will be below $300 million, which is very low for these types of roof projects.

George, how do you see Brazil emerging as a rare earth producer?

Well, I think it's been well documented over the last 12 months or so that

Brazil is actually becoming a, well, you're starting to emerge as a very, very significant potential

supplier of these roof metals to the recent market. You've seen the US make some announcements that

they are keen to align themselves with Brazil and their earth projects in Brazil to create that

independent western supply chain outside of China, and Brazil is seen as being at the forefront

of emerging in this area or being a reliable supply of earth elements to the western supply chain.

But as I said with the speed of what we are seeing with Mosega, we believe Rambo will be able to

bring this project into production very, very quickly as I've indicated earlier, and along with

the support of Mosega, you are very, very good partner to be in partnership with.

You mentioned the next steps of pre-fisibility study. What milestone should investors watch for

as UberRava moves towards development? Well, you said it yourself. It will be the pre-fisibility

start of their pre-fisibility, which we are already working on as a team, the Mosega and Rainbow

teams have been working very closely on their economic assessment, working very well together,

and we've already started outlining the road map for the pre-fis, and we'll be announcing the

start of that shortly, and then it will be the results of their pre-fisibility study. And any other

improvements to the UberRava process that Rambo brings to the pre-fis will also announce as well.

I hope to continue to keep us updated with your progress. Thank you very much for your time today.

Thank you. George Bennett, CEO Rambo Rear Earths.