Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd (LSE:RBW, OTC:RBWRF) told investors that its ‘pilot’ at the Phalaborwa project in South Africa has confirmed its innovative process for recovering rare earth elements (REE) from phosphogypsum.
The company, in a statement, said the breakthrough paves the way for the first commercial recovery of REEs using this method.
The new process reduces the plant’s footprint and is expected to deliver improved capex and opex efficiencies.
Rainbow said it successfully produced neodymium and praseodymium oxides at approximately 96% purity - confirmed by market participants as a saleable product.
"I am very proud of our team's extensive and hard work to establish and optimise the primary front-end leach flowsheet at Phalaborwa, which has delivered a simplified process to recover REE from phosphogypsum versus that published in our Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA),” chief executive George Bennett said.
“While we have now achieved two saleable products, being a mixed rare earth carbonate and separated Nd/Pr oxide of +96% purity, we will continue to optimise our process to achieve our target of +99% purity.”
The company now expects to complete a definitive feasibility study (DFS) before the end of 2025 (previous estimates targeted the first half).
Offtake talks are already underway with parties interested in securing a strategic and ethical supply of rare earths, which are critical to the green energy transition.
Highlighting the market opportunity, Bennett added: “The supply chain for REE is subject to excessive vulnerabilities due to the dominance of China, who are increasingly demonstrating their ability to restrict access to speciality metals.
“The geopolitical risks have never been greater and we foresee that Phalaborwa can play an important part in the development of an independent and ethical supply chain of all four critical magnet REE.
“Longer term, we expect that our innovative processing technology can be applied to a much larger addressable market and we are currently evaluating approaches for strategic partnership opportunities in Saudi Arabia, Canada and India.”
The company also has a partnership with the Mosaic Company in Brazil and a separate venture in Morocco.