Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd (LON:RBW) Chief Executive Officer Martin Eales caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their Phase I drilling update
Q1: Martin, I wanted to talk to you today about the announcement you put out this morning. Can you just remind us what that was?
A1: Well, as listeners and readers will be aware, we have started our first ever drilling campaign in the most recent quarter and we wanted to give an update to shareholders on the progress of that drilling campaign. So, what we put out today is some good news on mineral discoveries at the first high priority target at Kiyenzi which is an area about 2 kilometres away from where we’re currently mining.
Q2: Why do you consider this so positive?
A2: The really good news is that in fact we extended the number of drill holes that we put in the ground there because we made some discoveries. We drilled ten holes and five of them found significant mineralisation of rare earth elements and it’s in a breccia formation which for the uninitiated or non-geologists is really sort of dispersed vein material. We mined very clean and competent veins in our first mining area at Gasagwe but by definition they’re narrow whereas a breccia is much thicker. So, we’ve actually found intersections up to 2 metres thick which we hope will be much more amenable to mechanical extraction and therefore quicker and more cost efficient.
Q3: Given today’s news then, what comes next for Rainbow Rare Earths?
A3: So, what we have put in the announcement this morning is we still are finishing off the first phase drilling campaign, so we have four airborne identified magnetic anomalies which again we think could be potential carbonatite source of our rare earth veins.
Alongside that, before the end of June, we’re also going to do multiple lab testing of many samples of the drill core we’ve just taken out of Kiyenzi, just to confirm the extent of the mineralisation and hopefully more high-grade rare earths.
Q4: You mentioned targeted a resource by the end of this year, can you just summarise that for us?
A4: To target a resource, it’s more a function of more drilling and then using the code-compliant techniques to extrapolate a resource between all the extra holes that we’re drilling. Rainbow Rare Earths have committed this morning to that campaign based on what we’ve already found at Kiyenzi so we’re very confident, assuming the mineralisation is consistent as we hope, to being able to characterise a JORC or code-compliant resource in Q4 this year.
