Martin Eales, CEO of Rainbow, said: “We are pleased to announce the maiden JORC-compliant Mineral Resource Estimate for the Gakara project, on time and on budget. The Mineral Resource, which is based on only four out of the 28 identified targets within our licence, shows over 1.2 million tonnes of ore, a considerable deposit in its own right, and provides further evidence that the Gakara deposit is a world-class source of rare earth oxides.
“Three of the areas are high-grade vein stockworks, and include 12,491 tonnes of ore Resource at 55% TREO. These alone will provide over two years’ head feed for our planned ramp-up to 5,000t concentrate, and we will of course continue to explore these deposits further.
“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.
“These results will provide us with confidence in our ability to obtain near and medium-term sources of ore, but more importantly point to the existence of a truly unique deposit, which we will continue to explore in the future.”
Rainbow Rare Earths LTD (LON:RBW), the rare earth element mining company, today announced a maiden Mineral Resource Estimate completed in accordance with JORC (2012) in respect of the Company’s Gakara rare earths project in Burundi, East Africa, which is Africa’s only producing rare earth mine.
Highlights
· Total Maiden JORC compliant Resource of over 1.2 million tonnes of ore covering a small fraction of the Gakara Project – confirming for the first time the scale of the deposit
· Three areas (Gasagwe, Murambi South and Gomvyi Centre) are very high grade vein stockwork deposits – totalling 12,491 tonnes of Total Mineral Resource at an average TREO grade of 55% (compared to average rare earth project grades of c.1-4% TREO)
· Kiyenzi is a very large, lower grade mineralised deposit with nearly 1.2 million tonnes Mineral Resource at an average grade of 2.2% TREO employing a cut-off of 1% TREO
· The Mineral Resource is based on only four out of the 28 mineralised prospects across Rainbow’s existing Mining Licence – indicating significant further upside for future exploration
· The Exploration Target for very high grade vein ore (on a consistent 2016 basis) has increased by 70% following work undertaken across the deposit since IPO in January 2017
· Rainbow plans to rapidly bring Gomvyi Centre and Kiyenzi into production during 2019
JORC 2012 Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate
Earlier in the year, Rainbow announced that it was working towards the completion of a maiden code-compliant Mineral Resource estimate for its Gakara Rare Earths project (the ‘Project’), to be published by the end of 2018. This maiden Mineral Resource estimate, which is now complete, was undertaken on behalf of Rainbow by Benzu Minerals (Pty) Ltd (‘Benzu’ or ‘BM’), and has been reported in accordance with the guidelines of the Joint Ore Reserve Committee (JORC) 2012 code.
The most recent previously-published technical report relating to the project by Rainbow was the ‘JORC Competent Person’s Report for the Gakara REE Project, Burundi’ compiled by The MSA Group (Pty) Ltd (‘MSA’) and dated 30 September 2016, which was included in the Prospectus published in connection with the Company’s IPO on the London Stock Exchange in January 2017.
Since then, a considerable amount of work has been carried out at the Project, including greenfields and brownfields exploration, drilling, mining, ore processing testwork, modelling, and ore processing and concentrate production. This work has produced a significant amount of new technical information and data that have materially changed the understanding of the ore deposit and the REE mineralisation it contains, and has enabled the calculation of a maiden Mineral Resource estimate.
Since 2011, Rainbow has kept detailed maps of over one thousand REE vein occurrences across its mining licence, from which it has defined 28 “prospects” or “targets” (which have typically been named after the nearest village or other geographic features).
The maiden Mineral Resource estimate has been based on just four of these 28 mineralised targets, and therefore represents only a small portion of the mining licence area that the Company will seek to exploit in the coming years.
To view the plan of the prospect areas within the mining licence area please copy and paste the following link: https://i1.wp.com/rainbowrareearths.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/MLareashowing-prospects.png
| Deposit Name | Mineral Resource | |||||
| Measured (t) | Indicated (t) | Inferred (t) | Total Ore (t) | TREO Grade % | Contained TREO (t) | |
| Gasagwe | 153 | 273 | 570 | 996 | 58.7 | 585 |
| Murambi South | 972 | 2,917 | 4,480 | 8,369 | 54.8 | 4,586 |
| Gomvyi Centre | – | 861 | 2,265 | 3,126 | 54.0 | 1,688 |
| Total high grade deposits | 1,125 | 4,051 | 7,315 | 12,491 | 54.9 | 6,859 |
| Kiyenzi* | 58,671 | 297,274 | 837,033 | 1,192,978 | 2.2 | 26,570 |
| Total | 59,796 | 301,325 | 844,348 | 1,205,469 | 2.8 | 33,429 |
*Kiyenzi shown at 1% cut off grade. For detail on Kiyenzi Resources at higher cut-off grades see below.
For each of these four areas, further tonnages can be classified under JORC as ‘Target’ additional to the Resource figures. Based on standard JORC methodology these Target tonnes are as follows:
| Deposit Name | Exploration Target(t) |
| Gasagwe | 1,026 |
| Murambi South | 6,622 |
| Gomvyi Centre | 5,132 |
| Kiyenzi | 1,065,170 |
| Total | 1,077,950 |
The 6,859 tonnes of TREO Resource contained in the Gasagwe, Murambi South and Gomvyi Centre deposits alone, all of which the Company expects to be mining in 2019, would provide more than two years’ of concentrate production at 58% TREO based on the Company’s target run rate of 5,000 tonnes of concentrate per annum, even before including any production from the much larger Kiyenzi body.
