Recently-listed Rainbow Rare Earths Limited (LON:RBW) is making great strides at its Gakari rare earth project in Burundi.
The company is still on track to deliver rare earth concentrate from the project to its partner, Thyssen Kruup, by the fourth quarter of this year and added that it expects to benefit from the widely reported strengthening in rare earth oxide prices over the most recent quarter.
Listed in January of this year, the company is cracking on with the development of Gakari.
WATCH: 'We're right on track', says Rainbow Rare Earths' Martin Eales
It told investors on Monday that work at the initial mine site Gasagwe started in April, prior to the stockpiling of high-grade material from the main vein.
Emphasis was on stripping away superfluous material on the surface to expose the main vein to a height of at least one metre along the current exposed strike length.
There were several unrecorded veins discovered at Gasagwe, which Rainbow said supported the company’s confident expectations of there being significant upside to the known mineralisation.
Significant progress has been made in preparation work at the Kabezi site with permitting concluded ahead of commencement of civil works and construction of the processing plant.
At the run-of-mine processing plant, which will be built some 20 kilometres away from the company’s mining areas, bulk earthworks have been substantially completed in preparation for civil works to start this month.
Rainbow said it has received all necessary environmental and building permits for the construction of the processing plant.
"I am delighted to say that our fast-tracked development schedule is bearing fruit and we are making solid progress towards first production of rare earth concentrate within the next six months,” said Martin Eales, the chief executive of Rainbow.
"I look forward to providing further updates as we move up through the gears towards production over the coming months and also to delivering further news relating to the identification of future mining sites at Gakara as our exploration campaigns produce results," he added.
Shares in Rainbow were up 1.2% at 12.4p.