Rainbow Rare Earths Limited (LON:RBW) has published a maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource for its Gakara rare earths project in Burundi, East Africa.
The total resource currently is 1.2mln tonnes of ore, though Rainbow says this covers only a small fraction of the licence and was based on four out of the 28 mineralised prospects across the licence.
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Of these, three areas (Gasagwe, Murambi South and Gomvyi Centre) are very high-grade vein stockwork deposits.
They total 12,491 tonnes of Total Mineral Resource at an average grade of 55%.
Kiyenzi, the fourth prospect, is a very large, lower grade mineralised deposit and accounts for nearly 1.2mln tonnes of mineral resource at an average grade of 2.2%.
Rainbow’s plan is to bring Gomvyi Centre and Kiyenzi into production during 2019
Martin Eales, chief executive, said the three high-grade areas will provide over two years' head feed for our planned ramp-up to 5,000t concentrate.
"The Kiyenzi deposit has been confirmed as a very large, lower grade deposit, which ties in with the airborne and ground gravity results previously announced.
“The currently modelled deposit amounts to nearly 1.2 million tonnes of ore at 2.2% TREO and may well be related to a carbonatite source.
“This deposit is open in all directions and is an extremely exciting prospect as it presents a new opportunity for Rainbow to further develop its mining and processing capabilities.”