Rainbow Rare Earths (LSE:RBW) — Investor Presentation

0:01 Good morning, and welcome to the RAINBOW RARE EARTHS LIMITED Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, George Bennett. Good morning to you. Good morning and welcome to RAINBOW RARE's presentation. Again, happy new year to everybody and I think we are gonna see a very, very positive 2025.

0:50 Thanks very much everyone. The usual disclaimer. Thank you. Well, RARE's, I mean, lots of the audience have heard me present before, but for those new to the audience, we know that RARE's are critical building blocks in order to reach net zero by 2050. With Trump being inaugurated today, that might move slightly, but there's still massive, massive incentive for for governments to move towards net zero and try and achieve the goal set out in the Paris Accord. Now, you know, to achieve net zero, you know, we need green energy and we need reduced emissions.

1:35 And we see that with the growth in electric vehicle sales over the last several years, almost ten years now, really kicking off in 2015. Wind turbines being rolled out and and huge, huge volumes of wind turbines. And then risk going to all your consumer electronics as well, you know, your your your Bose speakers, your iPhones, your app your Samsung phones, your computer hard drives, and very, very importantly, defense. And with geopolitics the way they are, defense is even more important. Even though they don't use a high volume of Rares, they are very, very critical. If 35 fighter jet requires 420 kilos of Rares per fighter jet, These rare earths go into heat seeking missiles, missile guidance systems, your night vision goggles, you know, you can The US nuclear submarine has something like 35 tons of rare earths in it.

2:32 So very, very key for defense. And as I said, we see this importance being dominated by geopolitics. And of course, we've got new frontiers of growth for permanent magnets and requiring Rares, which are which I'll talk to you a bit later, which are robotics and what we call EV tolls, electrical vehicle take off and landing vehicles. As I've mentioned, the exciting new market predicted to require a lot of permanent magnets and foster even further growth that we've seen to date into the next decade will be humanoid robots for industrial use as well as helping to alleviate the the labor shortages that we see in the world today. In other words, we see there's a negative growth rate in China. They need something like 5,000,000 people per annum to to because of the the negative growth rate. We see Korea's go negative South Korea's go negative growth rate. We see this in Germany, Italy, and and other countries, industrialized countries around the world that have got a negative growth rate. And, you know, Elon Musk forecasts that there'll be 10,000,000,000 humanoid robots by 2040.

3:48 That's one for every person on the planet. And these robots, as I said, will do things like pick your grapes, tie your shoelaces, pour drinks, and, of course, huge industrial use as well. There's just a short video on the slide that I'd like to play now and where we can see robots. What never happened in Germany? This is a robot in in Los Angeles. This was taken a few months ago when my son was in in LA, and he has a robot performing the task of Deliveroo or Uber Eats, where it's it's delivering a pizza in that box. And, you know, we see this type of robotic growth taking place more and more in in the Western world.

4:34 During deliveries, you know, are forecast to increase significantly. I think last year, there's something like 200,000 growing deliveries made by people like Amazon. They're forecast to grow to 2,000,000 growing deliveries this year, and we see exponential growth continuing in this area. So we're very excited about these new frontiers of of growth demand usage. And as I said, we we we forecast that by the end of twenty forty, robotics and EV toll permanent magnet demand will be two thirds of of demand as and one third will be wind turbines and and EVs. Whereas in 2030, we we'd see EVs and wind turbines being two thirds of demand and robotics and EV tolls being one third. So that's gonna switch around in the following 10 towards 2014.

5:27 Yeah. We see EV tolls originally born out of drones. We see drone deliveries already happening commercially in in in a number of Western countries and this is gonna say to explode in in usage. And then EV tolls are basically air taxis. Four licenses are starting to operate on a commercial basis in The US this year. One will be O'Hare Airport, one will be JFK sorry, two will be JFK, one will be LAX, and yeah. So those are the four first four commercial licenses which will transport people from from airports to a destination. And the beauty about this is that a taxi, an EVTOL taxi from LAX to San Diego will take eight minutes as opposed to one to one and a half hours in a car or a taxi, and the price is forecast to be similar to that of an Uber Black. So for the price of an Uber Uber Black, you'll make this trip in eight minutes, and one can imagine how much this will save, you know, people who you know, in terms of of of of the expense of time, especially businessmen and even just normal holiday makers who prefer to spend eight minutes in the e text rather than one and a half hours in a in a vehicle going to the airport.

6:52 These e v tolls require 15 to 20 times more permanent magnets than e v does, electric vehicle does. And as I've mentioned, we see massive demand in this area in the next decade, and this is one of the new frontiers aligned in conjunction with robotics. These are some of the the demand forecast as I've as I've mentioned, and as you can see, advanced air mobility or eVTOLs and robotics forecast to expand going into the next decade and continuing out to 2014, which is as far as we we look at and compare to EVs as you see on the left hand side there. This is supplied by by Admins Research. So with this exciting outlook for RAINBOW, as I said, we intend to unlock global opportunities to be a low cost and responsible supplier of critical RAINBOW RARE's from phosphorylipsin.

7:47 As you can see, this is an independent verification that RAINBOW is the lowest rears project in development today and it will be the lowest rears project in production in the Western world and we believe we are even below the cost of Chinese roof production. As you can see, the arrow on the right hand side, this is RAINBOW's margin independently verified by August media. We then have Mount World, which is LIMITED in Australia, just breaking even and we have Mountain Pass at current roof pricing, losing money right now, and this is at at Rio and at prices in the last quarter. The reason why RAINBOW's margin is so much better than other development projects and even projects and will be compared to projects in production is that we don't have a lot of the associated costs that you see with a typical red mining project. We don't have the cost of of hard rock mining or even institute leaching.

8:48 Our cost to reclaim per ton is less than a dollar a ton, so it could $70.75 US dollars a ton. To mine a hard rock roof project just from an open pit, you're looking at them, a mining cost of anywhere between 15 to maybe $20.25 dollars a ton. We've got no hauling and stockpiling, crushing, milling, and grinding to produce a mixture of concentrate, which is your first stage of roof production, then we don't have the flotation cost and then cracking. You have to crack a a mineral into a chemical form before you can go further downstream to produce a greater earth oxides like LIMITED have been doing for many years and where mountain pass are going downstream further. For many many years, all they've done is produce a mixture of concentrate and that stops after the flotation process, but then they've recently gone into cracking the earth, concentrating to chemical form and now starting to get down to separated earth oxides.

9:50 Traditional mining projects, have a multitude of challenges to overcome, and these include low grades, complex mineralogy, low recovery rates, and high levels of radioactivity. And, you know, obviously, if it's irony clay deposit, there's huge environmental complications around in situ leaching. You know, they use ammonia sulfur ammonium sulfide sulfate, which is very, very detrimental to environment, or some, you know, clay projects are looking at heap leaches. But the typical recovery rates in the ironic clay project is 40 to 50%. RAINBOW RARE EARTHS overall recovery proven by extensive test work piloting and and base scale test work in laboratories, but as I say, further and and proven by large scale piloting is in the area of 65% recovery overall recovery.

10:44 Going on to, as I said, to the actual Palobor project itself, you know, the reason why we have an asset that we've got is because for sixty odd years, we had phosphate mining done by Foscol mining company in South Africa, produced phosphate slurry from phosphate rock, which is fed to a phosphoric acid plant next door, which was owned by SASL. The phosphoric acid plant is key to produce phosphoric acid for the fertilizer industry all all over the world, and the hard rock carbonatide source of the phosphate rock means that this type of phosphate rock is quite a high level of risk compared to sedimentary or marine deposits of phosphate rock. So that's the type of phosphate rock deposit that we are targeting that produces phosphoric acid, and this is what we have at Palapur, as I've mentioned.

11:38 The phosphate gypsum is a byproduct of phosphoric acid production, and the rare is initially upgraded in the phosphate concentration process and then further in the production of phosphoric acid in in the phosphoric acid sludge and that and that process produces gypsum waste residue in the rears to port with the gypsum onto gypsum stacks that we have at EARTHS LIMITED you have elsewhere in the world. RAINBOW is in you know, when we realized that we had these gypsum stacks with high grade rears in it, we initially looked at what SASL had done was produce a mixture of carbonates, and they've done our technical director said to me, George, look. We shouldn't stop where SASL stopped. Let's go all the way through to separated rears oxides because once we've got the rears in solution, it's it's it's not gonna be difficult to go and produce separated real oxides, and that's the RP that we've developed at RAINBOW. We're using proven processes in a slightly different configuration and with a slightly different application by using continuous ion exchange and continuous ion chromatography to take crack chemical stockpile of rare earths and go into separated rare earths. We'll deliver the four key magnet neodymium, prisidinium, dysprosium, and terbium, which are the two of the heavy rivers that are on shorter time today, even more so than neodymium and prisidinium.

13:03 And these are critical for all the permanent magnet applications I've spoken about, Not only do you need neodymium per selenium, but disposing of terbium are key to prevent these magnets from overheating and losing their magnetism in the motors that these roof magnets go into. Just mentioning footprinting the Pettibor project once again, you know, for the market to see, is that as you can see, Pettibor grade is five to 10 times higher than a typical arnichlade project and then mining grade is king. The reason why we compared this to arnicholade projects is because, you know, we have a chemical stockpile of of phosphoryl gypsum and we we start leaching it directly with sulfuric acid to recover the risk, and we see a similar thing in arnicholade projects where they use ammonium sulfate to directly in situ leach the rows out of the clay in the ground.

14:00 As you can see in terms of where Paloboros is very different is look at the parts per million for NDPR in our our project in Paloboros compared to the on the Cape project. So you can see how much higher grade we are in terms of our NDPR production and in terms of the absolute TREO grade. We then look at the hard rock projects below, you see Mountain Pass in MP materials. These they graded over 8% TREO as head grade feed into the crushing plants on-site and and you have a look at another standout is that RAINBOW's uranium and thorium content at PELIBOR are very, very low. Those levels you see there for the audience that that aren't familiar with this is literally the type of radiation levels you'll get in your microwave oven. But we see the radiating levels of thorium in Linus, which is significantly higher.

15:01 And this is why Linus initially only did this cracking and separation in Malaysia because they didn't want to have these the the radioactive waste deposited in on Australian continent. A couple of years ago, the Malaysian government said to Linus, we've had enough of this now. You gotta start dumping this back in your own country. And that's why Linus is now building a separation plant in Australia. They finally received permission to to deposit this radioactive waste on the Australian continent. And this is largely because of all the pressure around rears and creating independent supply chain outside of China. But even at those high rock grades or hard rock grades, as you can see it, you know, current pricing, MP is just breaking even I'm sorry. MP is is currently losing money, and Linus is just breaking even at current pricing.

15:56 So, you know, other hard rock projects have mountain to climb to gain to production. We need higher pricing to allow some of these other projects to get into production because there's enormous intelligence forecast. We need, you know, another seven road projects coming on stream over the next decade to to meet the independent supply chain demand that's gonna be built in the West. And, you know, we're very confident RAINBOW is one of those those development projects and we need as I said, there's ALUCA has been developed in Australia right now, being built and they are, you know and this is very significant in fact that we need another sort of six or seven over the next few years. Once again, highlighting why RAINBOW is a high margin project, low capital intensity and low operating cost. It's a brownfield site, we have the two phospho gypsum stacks. We will be neutralizing the acid water that you see on top of those stacks stacks in green using this in a closed circuit in our process plant being built at the southern end of those stacks or of stack b, which is the smallest stack and between stack a, which is the largest stack. Obviously, we'll be building a new stack to the sort of east of stack b. This will be aligned site.

17:19 Currently, those stacks are unaligned, so you have acid water leaching into the ground, which is not good for the environment And because those states were originally built, you know, sixty years ago without environmental legislation that you have in the world today, this will be, as as I say, to RFC standards and the equated principal standards. And the initially, stack b will be treated and be positioned on stack c. Stack b area will then be lined as well, and stack a will then be be treated, the the deposition will go into the balance of stack c and and and on to restack b sits at the moment. You know, you can see in red the the site is already fenced. The top left hand corner is where the original successful phosphoric acid plant was situated. This has been mothballed for some ten years now. It will never go into operation again.

18:14 But we see a high voltage switchyard in place. We see the other power line which runs through our property. So none of those costs you typically have to build out in a in a in a greenfield project will occur here at Palabora. And very importantly, next door, just at the the the top of this photograph, you've got the the Palabor Mining Company, which is the old Rio Tinto copper mine. They've gone underground into into the sulfides. They've commissioned a new sulfuric acid plant, and they will be producing sulfuric acid on-site, which they'll need to get rid of because they have about 10,000 tons of excess sulfuric acid that they need to get rid of, and we'll be taking a large portion of that excess acid for our process plant. So we have got a very, very cheap source of sulfuric acid. Your biggest cost in sulfuric acid is your transport, and that's why in The Congo, where they need sulfuric acid for the copper mines there and they have to transport it huge distances, the cost of sulfuric acid in The Congo is roughly, you know, $404,150 dollars a ton forecast for 2025, whereas our sulfuric acid price and our updated capital cost and OpEx numbers we published last month is still sitting around $95 a ton. So a significant saving in sulfuric acid cost. We also another reagent we require is silica, and silica will be supplied to us. It's a waste reagent

19:45 from the the Foscol operation just just north of the the PMC copper mine. So they have they have the silica waste that they'll be producing in their in their in their phosphate slurry production process, and that that silica will be supplied to RAINBOW at a very, very low cost in in a waste product. We're also five minutes from the town, so we service by Hard Rock I'm sorry, a hard hard top road or toll road. There's an airport very nearby, and there's a very large town that's supporting the three mines that operate in this town already. So a very, very good jurisdiction to be operating in in South Africa. I'll now come into the the process flow sheet, and, Dave, you can come in now, please.

20:35 Thanks, George, and good morning. On this short slide, you can see the block flow diagram that was developed for our PEA. This was based on bench scale test work that was conducted at the Anstow facility in Australia. After we completed that, we made a decision that it would be preferable for us to conduct the large scale pilot plant operations in Johannesburg. And we then did a further bench scale test work program. And during the initial setup runs on the pilot plant, we were able to identify a number of optimization opportunities for this flow sheet.

21:22 And the the the elements of plant that are now highlighted in a pink color on this block flow diagram have all been eliminated from the flow sheet. So a significant chunk of the process has been removed, greatly simplifying the project to the benefit of both capital and operating costs. So we've been able to remove completely the impurity leach and the downstream processing steps that are associated with that. And we've also been able to remove the rare earth fluoride precipitation step of the following acid bake and water leach processes that have now been removed from flow sheet and we're able to go directly to the CIX step.

22:11 Then that has allowed us to produce a improved quality of product as an intermediate product in terms of a rare earth mixed rare earth carbonate, which goes to the downstream separation processes and purification processes. If I move on to the next slide, here you can see a number of photographs of the pilot plant operation. This was a a very large scale operation compared with the average typical pilot operation for one of these type of projects, which generally would run at somewhere around two to five kilograms per hour, whereas this process was run at 20 kilograms per hour.

22:58 So significant scale, which we felt was appropriate given that this is a relatively new process that we're bringing together. Although each of the individual steps in the process are in fact very well proven, very standard processes to the utilize throughout the extraction industry. For example, agitated leach tanks, filters, pumps, etcetera. There's nothing strange or unusual in terms of the equipment or the technology that's being used in this process. The pilot plant confirmed very nicely our process flow sheet. And we had at the 65% or higher on all of our runs of recovery of rare earths from the fossil gypsum.

23:46 And we, again, were able to deliver a high quality intermediate product for the subsequent separation and purification processes. We did also identify a number of further opportunities for optimizing this process. These are relatively small, but could all have some benefit in terms of capital and operating costs or simplifying the process as we're giving those further evaluation as as we stand now. And in terms of the separation process, I know this is an area of great interest for everybody. We've demonstrated in the work that was conducted in Florida the ability to separate the rare earths either in groups or individually. So we're comfortable that the separation process is going to work.

24:34 What we need to focus on at the moment is the removal of impurities, which we want to do during the continuous ion exchange, the CIX process, and ahead of the continuous ion chromatography, the CIC, which is used to then do the separation of the rare earths or the groups of rare earths. And our focus right now is that impurity removal. By by the way, the the CIX step was actually done on a pilot scale at VIMITED in Johannesburg in in conjunction with our leach processes. So we're very comfortable about that process and the way that's going to work. We've also made a decision to establish our own laboratory now in Johannesburg.

25:26 The the idea here is that we've actually completed all the leach test work in Johannesburg, and our technical team there is now available to do work on the CIX and CIX steps. And, also, we ran into a problem in Florida where the in the laboratory there, the analytical equipment used to analyze the samples being produced in in the CIX and the CIC run into problems. So they had to go outside outsourcing at considerable expense. And with with about a two week turnaround, there's a big delay on every step of the processing. And we felt that we would have a a greater benefit if we relocated the this process into Johannesburg. We'd be able to speed up the program and improve on the cost for the program as well.

26:25 In this slide, you can see a number of photographs of the laboratory that we've established in Johannesburg. And we we also on top of the work that we want to do for Palau, which remains our our key priority, we do have a number of other project opportunities from different parts of the world, including the Ugaraba project, which is we'll deal with a bit later. And also the Canadian project that's coming up. So a number of opportunities which motivate us to have a laboratory where we can apply our own technical team, our own IP, and and have control of the work that's going on.

27:10 And I'm pleased to say that we've we've managed to conduct the first test in this laboratory within three months of making the decision to establish it. As you can see from the photographs, it's a well established world class facility that we've got with with a very focused approach to extracting rare earths from phosphogypsum, then also developing and upgrading the process for separation and purification of the rare earth oxide products that we're aiming to produce for the magnet rare earths. So so this is up and running, and we're very excited about having this on the go.

27:56 I think the next slide is over to you, George. Yeah. Just to finish off on the lab, we've got a site visit there next week ahead of the mining in Dobra and Cape Town. We've got a number of clients, investors, and analysts visiting that laboratory just to see what we believe is a world class facility. Just to move on to the interim report that we published last month, which is one of the key reasons for this update for the RMC, is that, you know, as previously reported, our resource from the PEA had moved from up from fourteen year life to 35,000,000 tons to a sixteen year life. But very importantly is that our CapEx number is within the overall inflation over the period from October 22 till December last year. In other words, you know, if one applied purely inflation to our original CapEx numbers, you know, you would have looked at a number above 330, and we would and we we've come in at $326,000,000.

29:02 This CapEx number is is gonna have far higher level of accuracy compared to the PA number, which large parts of the of the capital that make up this capital number are d DFS standard in terms of sizing, pricing, and so forth. So we're very confident that we are keeping our our capital well within the the inflation currently that has occurred in the market over the last couple of years. And this is compared to a lot of other projects. You know, I don't like to to mention names, obviously, or but if one if looks at various projects that are being developed in the world right now, they've all had massive CapEx plots of, you know, some between 50% to, you know, almost 100, hundreds and hundreds and in some cases, almost a billion dollars more for some of those projects that are being developed and projects and other minerals.

29:56 Our operating cost per kilogram came in at $12.91, which is exceptionally low and we believe this is on par with Chinese cost of production, if not operating cost, I should say, not even lower. You know, as I said, this this is an update on on the PEA number that we released in October 22 and using the same pricing metrics as we use in the PEA, the post tax NPV is still very, very robust for this project. And as Dave mentioned, we've been able to reconfirm our recovery numbers of slightly better than 65% overall recovery. And neodymium, presidinium, and very importantly, dysprosium and terbium production numbers are are very, very robust in terms of absolute tonnage, and we've got a very, very strong post tax IRR, and EBITDA margin is still significantly above what you see in the typical mining project by a long way.

30:56 On the right hand side is a photograph of the hydraulic mining that part that we piloted apart from the piloting of the process in South Africa. We also piloted the reclaim using hydraulic hoses, and it's a full scale reclaim pilot reclaim taking place there. And we're pleased to say that the gypsum behaves in a similar manner as to what we anticipated in the PEA. And the the cost of mining this phosphate gypsum or reclaiming it, I should say, is even lower than what we published in the PEA. It's coming in that circa seventy, seventy five years cents per ton compared to, I think, $1.28 cents per ton in the PEA. In terms of EBITDA sensitivity to pricing, this is very, very important because we believe that, you know, to go into development in a project such as this, need to be resilient against even in low pricing environments.

31:53 And if you look at the far left hand side of of the of the slide in front of you, you look at the the basket here at 78 spot $4.06, that's and this December $20.24, which is last month, that was the price of our basket. And this is because, you know, I'm using a EYTV neodymium presidinium price of circa 58 to $60 a kg, which is where we're sitting now. And with the credit of the disposing of Terbium, which is a significant credit to our baskets, At that basket price, if we're in production today, we'd still be making $63,000,000 of EBITDA, which is, you know, better than any earth project in in in in development or operating in the world today. So we're very, very pleased about the these the metrics of these numbers.

32:47 And if you look at if we have production today, if we look at the spot pricing that was achieved in 2022, you know, we would have made a $191,000,000 EBITDA. So yeah. And that that's over the life of the project using spot rate pricing as of 2022. But, you know, all the forecasters are forecasting rate prices to rise over the next eighteen months, which is which will bode well for RAINBOW because that's when we will be in construction and then looking I'll talk about the timeline about later, but looking to go into production in 2027. Once again, we believe we have a green roof project, one of the greenest in the world, you know, purely because we are treating a waste a waste residue. We're gonna be depositing this waste residue onto a new line stack site, is currently the unlined as I've mentioned.

33:39 We'll be using the phosphates and water that's associated with these stakes. We'll be neutralizing it in our process plant. We'll be creating a clean benign gypsum, which will then be sold into the South African gypsum market. Not all of it unfortunately because the gypsum market is not big enough for our production rate which is gonna be 2,200,000 tons per annum of phosphory gypsum we'll be treating. And South African total South African gypsum market is only 1,200,000 tons per annum. But the South African gypsum market is running short of gypsum. We have got a letter of intent with the biggest gypsum trader in South Africa, and we will be looking to capture sort of 4,500,000 tons per annum of that gypsum market. And as I say, it it, you know, it's not our primary business, so we can afford to be a low cost producer or or seller of gypsum into this heavy market to capture as much market share as we can. But we save on deposition and over many, many years, the gypsum stacks will be completely leveled in South Africa and there will be a complete rehabilitation of that of that site, which which most mining projects can't claim.

34:48 There was a phosphory gypsum stack, which Omnia, a big fertilizer producer in South Africa, used to have, and that gypsum stack has been completely sold into South African gypsum market over a number of years, and that stack is now completely leveled. We anticipate seeing a similar thing in Paloborla. Plus, we're also using a source of reagents, which are which are waste byproducts in terms of the sulfuric acid production next door as well as the silica that we'll be using, which is sourced from Foscol next door. So once again, we're using waste products in our process, which bodes very well for for ESG sort of point in the circular economy. And, of course, the social value is huge. You know, lots of people that lost their jobs in the in the fossil phosphoric acid plant, still haven't been reemployed in the area. We'll be hoping to reemploy as many of those that are still able to work and have got the skills of working in a in a very acidic environment like they worked in the phosphoric acid plant in in Pernambola.

35:51 Just in terms of timeline, as I mentioned last year, we did a resource update. We published the interim study numbers. This year, we focused on final separation tests we're getting in South Africa using our own laboratory and a pilot plant. We've shipped the pilot plant from it was operating in Florida. It's actually arrived in South Africa on our shores yesterday. It'll be moved up to Palabora in the next few days, And then over the coming weeks, we will be reconfiguring that pilot plant and running a pilot operation based on the final test work and optimization that we've seen that's been running our laboratory in South Africa. And that we'll be doing we'll go into project financing and we still expect it to be in production in 2027 as per the original time. We did see a delay as I've as I mentioned to the market in my update just over a month ago and that was to the DFS, but we still now anticipate completing the DFS in 2025 as I've mentioned and we still aim to we still expect to be in production in 2027.

37:00 This is creating, as I said, the RP we've we've we've we've we've created created within within RAINBOW RAINBOW and by developing the PATABWR project EARTHS has led to a huge HEAGUE global GLOBAW opportunity for RAINBOW, which not many junior miners have and especially in the rare space. We signed an MOU INC.:] with Brazil, HUSSONG, Hubaraba. That's our most advanced strategic partnership or or partnership project. We are going to be going into economic assessment to to prove to the world our good and a project. This is we're financing that $50.50 with the with Mosaic in Brazil. It's once again, it's a hard rock source of carbonatite, which is fed a phosphoric acid plant in Brazil. We have an opportunity in Brazil sorry, in Brazil and Canada where we've been approached by a Canadian junior there. He's he will be developing a phosphoric acid plant fit from a carbonatite source of hard rock phosphate slurry, and that will be producing high grade phosphate gypsum in terms of RARE EARTHS content, and they will have looked they will quote RAINBOW to part with them on on that portion of of the project, which we'd be very happy to do. We've been approached by the Saudi government to be a partner and looking at assessing their phospho gypsum stockpiles in Saudi Arabia.

38:20 The same has happened in Morocco, and we've also had been approached in by guys who want to form a strategic partnership with RAINBOW to look at the phospho gypsum stacks that are present in India right now. So a huge global opportunity. RAINBOW is not just a single project, you know, sixteen year life project. We have lots and lot of opportunities around the world. More importantly, the Oberarbor project is a long life project. It's a massive opportunity, and Dave will talk more about that on the next slide. Dave? Hello? David? Hi. Hi, George. Sorry. I was playing with the microphone mute there. Yes. Uber Uber is is a particularly exciting project for us.

39:10 I think the key to note is it's large scale project. They're currently producing over 4,000,000 tonnes per annum of phosphogypsum, which will peak at about 5,000,000 tonnes per annum in the coming years. The grade of the phosphogypsum there is in fact higher than Paloboros ranging from about 4,500 parts per million up to 7,900 parts per million of total rare earth oxides. So this is a very significant opportunity. I think we we initially started that we would look at the recovering phosphorylipsum and and extracting the rare earths from the existing stacks, which are currently around about 70,000,000 tons, double that of Balboa.

40:05 But it in looking closer at the project, it makes more sense for us to focus in on the current arising coming out of the existing phospho production that's coming out of the phosphoric acid plant, which offers some very interesting opportunities, which I'll deal with in a in a few moments. But we we started out running a number of tests at SCS in Canada and demonstrated that we could recover up to 60% of the rare earths using the Palabora operating conditions. Subsequent to that, we have been directing a test work program at Mosaiq's laboratory in Brazil.

40:53 And we've been able to get over 70% recovery of the rare earths from phosphogypsum by tweaking the conditions compared with Palomor. That's what prompted us to say we we really need to move quickly now into an economic assessment. And we're just finalizing the last steps in the process test work to have a flow sheet that we can base that economic assessment on. And in in the next few months, we'd we'd expect to complete that and be in a position to publish that economic assessment. But certainly, from everything we're looking at, it looks like a really exciting project. It's it's got bigger scale than the Paloboros, and it has a a a very long life potential.

41:41 Bear in mind that this is an existing operation. The mining program runs on for decades. We we really do think this is going to be a substantial project for RAINBOW. Going to look at why why does it look interesting for us to process the material as it comes out of the phosphoric acid plant. It eliminates the reclaim process, so that's a cost that just disappears for us. We can go directly into leaching of that as it exits the phosphoric acid plant. In addition, the plan for Mosaic is to sell 100% of the fossil gypsum after we've re extracted the rare earths into the agricultural industry that surrounds them. It's a very large scale agricultural area.

42:34 They're currently selling large amount in the order of three to 4,000,000 tons per annum, and we'd like to upgrade that to four to 5,000,000 tons per annum. So we will not need to stack the fossil gypsum after it's being processed in the rare earth plant. It will be able to go directly into the agricultural industry. And on top of that, because we're right next door to this existing operation, they readily have available to us power that is co generated as a result of the sulfuric acid production. We readily have an availability of steam for heating the leach, which is again a byproduct of the acid production. And there's a number of key reagents which are already being used there, which means that they're readily available on-site as well. And on top of that, we have a a very professional, very strong technical team from us there support the project and a and a very willing and eager partner in getting this project up and running.

43:37 So all in all, this is a very exciting project for us, and it's likely to move quite quickly. Our first our focus remains on Palo Verde, but this will be a very quick follow on, I believe, if all goes well. Thanks, George. Thank you, Dave. Yeah. So as I've mentioned, this is extremely exciting project for RAINBOW, much much longer life than RAINBOW, and and we think we're dealing with a global, you know, fertilizer business called Mosaic. And as Dave mentioned, the the team is first class, and we're working extremely well with this team, with the RAINBOW team. Thank you. We've got a very strong technical team led by Dave with quite a lot of experience in the real space.

44:26 You know, you see underneath Dave and Chris Maruvi and Rue Voldemu. There's there's blocks in in green or real feasibility studies, makeable feasibility studies done in previous companies that where we work together. Our chairman initially developed Kokara, another earth project here in Africa, and then we got lots of uranium experience and so forth, which is important because when you're designing and building uranium processing plants, you use continuous ion exchange, which is a a process we're very familiar with as a RAINBOW team. And as a team, we've built a couple of uranium plants in South Africa and then a number of uranium studies.

45:12 And, of course, very importantly, with uranium plants, you are looking at materials of construction very carefully because you're dealing in a very acidic environment. So you need to make sure you've got, you know, the correct stainless steel pieces of equipment that make sure that your plant doesn't break down, be it from the leach tanks, your mouth gate valves, your your pumps, and so forth. So all that experience we've learned in the uranium space, we bring to bear on the RAINBOW projects. And once again, why RAINBOW? You know, we we believe we've got very strong backers that will be one of the highest grade projects in development today. It's it's been, as I say, independently verified that we are we've got a unique flow sheet flow sheet that brings a low capital intensity to this project that you don't see in in other projects as well as a very, low OpEx.

46:06 And we've got US government support through the DFC, which have committed $50,000,000 in project in one project and equity in at the construction phase of our project. We have TechNet, which is a critical minerals fund, which has already got a 12% stake in in RAINBOW and core resources, the market we were seeing last year, took a royalty out in RAINBOW, and they are very, supportive of RAINBOW and look forward to doing more business with RAINBOW going forward. But we've very strong shareholders, very good support, and both both the DFC, Techmed, and the CORA have done independent due diligence on the processes that we are using at RAINBOW and which I think is bodes very well for investors that we've already had weeks and weeks and weeks of different stages of of, let's say, technical d d, and we've been given a clean bill of health on on basically the flow sheeted rainbow is has been has been pricing for DFS going forward. So we're very, confident. And I'd like to thank the audience for taking part.

47:18 Thank you. Perfect. George, Dave, thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. George, Dave, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And George, if I may now hand back to you and kindly ask you to read out the questions where appropriate to do so and I'll pick up from you both at the end. Thank you. Sure. Thanks very much for that. I have to read the questions. So the first question is, please can you explain the rest of the purification we needed to get us to the market, market ready assay of 99% purity in terms of cost, capital and time, pre final investment decision. Well, I can tell you that in terms of cost and capital, we've already, as you can see, purchased all the equipment for that lab.

48:22 The lab's up and running. The we did it in record time. The cost of running that lab, the cost of completing the DFS based on the the results coming out of that lab and running the pilot plant, switching the pilot plant operation for the back end from Florida to South Africa are still well are still well within our original budget. I might add that if we hadn't made the decision of moving of financing and well, not financing, buying our own laboratory or or or establishing our own laboratory, moving the pilot plant operation to South Africa, you know, if we if we carried on doing it in Florida, not only would have it would have cost us about a year extra in time, it would have cost us a lot more in capital at and we would have blown our our DFS budget. But by bringing it in house and moving the plant to South Africa, we're well within our original d DFS budget. And as I mentioned, we was we still aim to complete the DFS in 2025 and be in production in 2027.

49:29 In terms of the actual sort of explain the work, the purification work, I'll let Dave just briefly complete the last part of that question. Yes. Hi. Thanks, George. Yes. In Florida, we were able to demonstrate that the separation of rare earths and the rare earth groups in some cases is achievable. So we're we're very comfortable with that process is going to work. What we've also done in MINTECH during the pilot operation is rather a pilot scale continuous ion exchange for recovery of the rare earths from the leak solutions. So again, we're very confident with that step.

50:14 What hasn't been put together, and this is because the laboratory in Florida ran into problems with their analytical equipment, is is to link these two and run it through the process of the the continuous ion exchange, which is essentially about reducing the impurities that come with the rare earths during the leaching process, and then presenting to the separation process a very clean rare earth solution for separation steps. That that wasn't done and wasn't achieved in Florida. And as George said, the the time to get there was going to blow out on us as well as the cost. Hence, the decision to move to process of this pilot plant across to our own laboratory now.

51:04 So our starting point here is to run with the continuous sign exchange process that we've established, improve upon the purity rejection steps in there to the point where we're satisfied that we're delivering to the separation steps, the a solution that will allow us to produce a high purity separated rare earth product. The the focus is primarily about the impurity rejection steps and followed then by separating to a high purity product. As I say, separation has been demonstrated, and CIX has been demonstrated to run well. So we we remain confident that we will achieve our targets.

51:54 That's that's basically where we are now. Once we've done the bench scale work in the laboratory there, we're satisfied with that maturity rejection. We will fire up the pilot plant, which is currently clearing customs in South Africa and will be established in the next couple of months and reconfigured. So within the next few months, we hope to be able to have some good results out of that separation process. Thank you, Dave. Next question is any news on Burundi, just short and sweet. Burundi has been written off to zero in our books. You know, we are totally focused on sourcing Rares out of phosphoryl gypsum opportunities globally, which is significant in size compared to what Burundi could ever have been. And but to add to that, we are in negotiations with the government for a restart operation, and we you know, so those we we were in country in in December, and we're just waiting to hear from the government once again. But I'll now move on to in in October 24, investor meeting.

52:58 The timeline to production, smart stated interim report to allow the commencement of project financing. Now that the interim report was issued in December 24, have financing discussions commenced, or do you need to wait for anything else? Well, as you know, we published that in the second week of December, and that's when the whole world went on vacation, especially in South Africa for the the the summer period in South Africa and the short Christmas period in in Europe. We now are going to the mining in Barber next week in Cape Town, which starts international mining in Daba, and that's where we will now be engaging with the financing discussions in terms of the debts and so forth. So, yes, the interim report has been very successful in terms of of highlighting the low capital and and the OpEx numbers. So we are happy to start those those those discussions in the next couple of weeks starting with the mining in Cape Town.

54:05 I'm just looking at the next question. One says, can you describe the activities you're undertaking your ongoing roof, oxide separation work? I believe we wanted that. Mark, another question is what are RAINBOW's plans for transporting 1,900 tons of of oxide per annum to his end customers? To be honest with you, you know, logistics is the smallest concern for this project. Mountain 100 tons per annum, that's that's a small amount of containers leaving the site by road every month, you know, I think, yeah, it's it's a it's a few 100 tons of of product leaving per month. So it's a very, very small quantity that we have to transport transport, and it's it's a it's a negligible cost, I should say, and and really, it's not a concern for Amber. If we're a bulk producer of iron ore, coal, manganese, and so forth, this becomes a key issue for a project. But, you know, we are transporting just a few container loads a month of RARE EARTHS product. So very, very easy to ship it to our to our customers.

55:23 Next question is how long would you estimate, please, before the final final investment decision is made? And are you at all concerned about the markets and ability to raise capital? Well, you know, as I said, we tend to complete the the affairs within the 2025 timeline, and that will be able to first to conclude final financing of the project in terms of debt as well as the the equity that we'll need for the project. Remember, this project will be able to cover two thirds debt quite comfortably because of the high EBITDA margin. So we're very comfortable on that process. In terms of the markets, I think, you know, the geopolitics of the the world at the moment are very fragile, but they bode well for the rural market, you know.

56:15 The West and especially The US under Donald Trump is even more focused on creating independent supply chain outside of China for critical minerals. And RARE has been the most critical of these because China controls not only circa 62 to 80% of the primary production of of of of of mined rare earths, but they control circa 95% of the downstream processing. So all the other strategic minerals, they are very dominant China, but not quite as dominant as rare earths. So I think it bodes well for rare earths, and we will and so we're very excited over the next few years for the market. And and in terms of pricing, we we think we've seen the load in the earth pricing over the last couple of months has been bumping between, you know, 53 and $60 per per kilogram for NDPR.

57:08 We think this is the bottoming out, and all the forecast is all forecast in 2025 to be a far better pricing environment for the rare prices. And we see this from a couple of presentations that we've attended recently by by forecasters in the rare space that are also looking for a stronger 2025. So we're quite comfortable with the outlook. Last year wasn't a good year for pricing as we all know, but we anticipate much higher pricing this year. Well, I would say higher pricing this year. And and our ability to raise capital, we've proven time and time again. We are very confident that the team has the ability to raise the capital when required to build this project project and get us into into production. I think those are all the questions I've seen, and I'd like to thank the audience.

57:56 Perfect. George, Dave, thank you for addressing those questions for investors today. But before we direct investors to provide you with their feedback, which one is particularly important to the company, George, can I please ask you for a few closing comments? Yeah. I just think that RAINBOW is in a very good space. We're very excited about achieving the final purity by optimizing it in our own laboratory and having the pilot plant under our control in South Africa. The pilot plant, I'm pleased to say, arrived on our shores. I think I mentioned yesterday, the ship docked. So that pilot plant will be up in Johannesburg within a few days after clearing customs. And and and as I said, apart from the excitement within RAINBOW project level, I think at the macro level, we're gonna see much better earth pricing this year, and we've got these massive new areas of of frontiers of that are gonna create demand for permanent magnets and very key and very key part of those permanent magnets will be the rears that we will be producing at RAINBOW. So I think we're very excited. Thank you very much.

59:01 Fantastic. George, Dave, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the board can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of RAINBOW RARE EARTHS LIMITED, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all. Thank you.