Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd (LON:RBW) Chief Executive Officer Martin Eales caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their latest drilling results, targeting a maiden resource and what investors can look forward to in the rest of the year.
Q1: Some drilling results out today, what can you tell us about them?
A1: As we previously announced in April, we have been looking forward to the lab results from our Kiyenzi drilling, in the field you can tell using the machines we’ve got typically that you’ve hit some mineralisation but, of course, you need to wait for the lab results to get confirmation of exactly what you’ve got. As we’ve announced today, we’ve found some very very high grades within the Kiyenzi drill core which we’re very excited about.
Q2: Why is it so exciting?
A2: I think what this confirms to us is, and the announcement goes into some detail on this, you must remember that at the moment across the deposit we have mapped, and we’re mining, what are quite clean narrow veins of rare earths. They are very high grade and we often say we’re one of the highest, if not the highest rare earth deposit in the world but narrow veins can only take you so far, they need typically to be mined by hand and so it’s quite slow going and with low volumes.
What we think we’ve found a Kiyenzi is a much wider, deeper mineralised area, of course, per metre cubed or per tonne the grades are going to be lower than in the narrow veins but of course with a much more wider area, it’s much more suitable to mechanised mining and therefore should be capable of mining at much higher volumes.
Q3: What are the next steps that are involved?
A3: So, next steps for Rainbow Rare Earths is to move to our Phase II drilling campaign, this is all going to be focussed on this Kiyenzi target area. We expect to start that drilling within the next week or two, over July and August, all with a target to announce our first code-compliant resource in Q4 this year.
Q4: And you’re targeting a maiden resource later this year?
A4: Well, that’s right. Rainbow is unusual in many ways, not least in the fact that we’ve IPO’d and started mining and producing without a drill hole and without a resource so we’re now doing things to normalise ourselves a little bit. The resource is going to be important in so many ways, it aids mine planning and the longer term value underpinned to the company so it’s a real target and quite a milestone for us.
Q5: It all sounds very positive, what else can we look forward to from Rainbow Rare Earths?
A5: In the rest of the year, apart from the targeted resource in Q4, I should say that we intent to include near-term resource numbers from our mining target at Gasagwe and our next mining area will be explained in more detail in the quarterly update later in July.
So, in terms of what we’ve got to look forward to, we’ve got later in July the quarterly update along with the new plan for the next mining area then we have results in September and soon after that we hope to announce that resource we’ve just discussed.
