Rainbow Rare Earths (LSE:RBW) — Investor Presentation

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the RAINBOW RARE EARTHS LIMITED investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the q and a tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it is appropriate to do so. And before we begin, as usual, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, George Bennett. George, good morning, sir. Good morning, and thanks for having me.

0:48 Yeah. Once again, this is a presentation on year end results and progress of RAINBOW over the last year. And, hopefully, some of the attendees might have already seen the announcements we've made over the last year, but, you know, I'll cover a lot of those, and, hopefully, you'll get a better understanding of where we are at RAINBOW at the moment. There's the usual disclaimer, and I'll now move on to the presentation. Thank you. So I'm pleased to say that we've after after the last year, we've been able to achieve the first commercial recovery of roof elements from phosphogypsum. Guys have been trying to do this for many, many years. Historically, everyone knew there was phospho gypsum contained RARE EARTH elements.

1:35 But when we secured the Para Bora project and started working until January 2021, we realized that we had something special here. And as you can see from the slide up there that the key thing about this type of phosphoryl gypsum that we are chasing around the world is that it's a source of phosphate from a hard rock carbonatite, which is mined and turned into a phosphate slurry through concentration process, and this is fed into a phosphoric acid plant. The phosphoric acid plant is used to produce phosphoric acid for the fertilizer industry globally and in this type of phosphoric acid production process, it uses sulfuric acid as a large additive as well as heat to generate phosphoric acid.

2:24 And that's a key element in RAINBOW project. As I said, the phosphoric acid produces a waste product called phosphogypsum and the reels are concentrated in the phospho gypsum that is deposited onto a stack. In Pelleboros cases onto two stacks and the gypsum waste residue, the rears deport into the gypsum waste residue into economic quantities of rears in the phospho gypsum. RAINBOW has been able to develop a unique flow sheet with in house RP to recover the rears from those phospho gypsum. I just wanna stress here that all the technology we're using is not is proven in other industries. So it's it's tried and tested and proven. In other words, we're using big belt filters, which are commonly used in the mineral processing industries. We're using leach tanks.

3:18 You know, we're using filtration. We're using rapid consolidation of the rears into a pregnant leach solution and then we're going to continuous ion exchange. Continuous ion exchange is used throughout the world and and various industries, but very very well known in the uranium industry where it's used when you design and build uranium plants. And I wanna stress that the RAINBOW team have designed and built two uranium plants and and they're on production. So we've got all that experience within within the team. And then we're using continuous ion chromatography, which is, once again, it's a it's a technology that was patented some thirty odd years ago. It's used in the sugar industry, lysine industry, as well as the biochem industry and phosphate industry.

4:04 And it's used to extract uranium and thorium out of phospho gypsum in Morocco at the moment by OCP. And once again, it's a proven technology. We're just using it in a slightly in a slightly different arrangement or in a flow sheet, and we're targeting rivers which are very similar to uranium and thorium that we all know are part of the they're not classical rivers. The 70 elements make up a rare earth sweep, but uranium and thorium are also associated with rare earths. And the fact that this technology is successfully applied to remove uranium and thorium gave us the confidence that it's the right technology to use going forward to extract rare earths out of out of this phosphate gypsum. So as I stress, it's an innovative flow sheet, but you using proven processes and we're using these proven processes to recover errors which are critical to the green technology and the green tools the concession, I should say. And there's enough about that on the on the on the various you can Google it, but we all know that it's key to what everyone's trying to achieve in terms of next year by twenty twenty fifty.

5:13 So some of the achievements over the last twelve months, which I think we're very proud proud about, our pilot plant, as we've been able to produce two saleable products to date. So initially, I wanted to derisk RAINBOW for investors. And and the key first key risking step was that we successfully produce a mixture of carbonates. And if RAINBOW had stopped at that stage, we would have had a successful product which we could sell. A lot of RARE EARTHS projects start and only produce a mixture of concentrate, then they they crack those RARE EARTHS into a chemical form and they stop at producing a mixture of carbonate. Now RAINBOW successfully did that and carbonate has got a payability of round about 70%.

5:58 We didn't want to stop there, we wanted to go all the way through to separated roots oxides. As I mentioned, using technology which is proven, but it's just for the first time we're applying it to the RARE EARTHS suite processing. And we've successfully derisked the rainbow further, but we've been able to achieve separated RAINBOW EARTHS at circa 96 to 97% purity using this back end technology we've described, continuous ion exchange and continuous ion chromatography. And that in itself is another de risking step for Amber because we've established through two completely different parties that we could sell this purity level of separated roof oxides, but we would suffer an impurity discount similar to other minerals in the mineral space that, you know, if you produce a copper concentrate depending on how pure your concentrate is, you will then get discounted from the the index of of of of copper copper metal, which is a 100% copper and your copper concentrate would be would be discounted for the amount of impurities in your copper concentrate. So it's most similar to what you see in other minerals around the world. But our target is 99% plus purity and we are on our way to achieving that.

7:22 We've also, during the last year, secured strategic equity funding for the project at the project level from the US government, the DFC of $50,000,000. This is via the the the green critical minerals fund of TechNet, and this $50,000,000 has been committed by the DFC via TechNet into RAINBOW's Palobor project here in South Africa. So we think that's a very, significant derisking step. We had independent third party validation of our of our project, of our technology, of the flow sheet, and so forth. So that was very, very good to receive that $50,000,000 equity investment commitment by the DFC. We also did a $5,500,000 private placing strongly supported by the board and management during the course of the year.

8:09 And then in July 24, we did a $10,000,000 raise by an 8.5 cent percent royalty agreement and share placement with the CORA, largely undilutive to RAINBOW shareholders and we've all been about trying to protect shareholder dilution in RAINBOW as we move as we move forward. Once again, the core of the extensive DD on RAINBOW. It's not only legal, but technical DD on our flow sheet. And once again, we've had third party validation signed off twice within the last year on RAINBOW's processes that we'll be using to extract the risk from the phospho gypsum. So once again, I believe a very big and confident tick in RAINBOW. We also had an update of the resource, an increased by 15% to circa 35,000,000 tons, which will give us a extra two years of project life. We've gone from fourteen years to sixteen years and sixteen years for the for the guys in the industry will know that's a very, good sort of project life for for this type of project.

9:11 And we and as we've mentioned, the institute value of the RARE's at spot prices at the time is $7,300,000,000. And we want know that RARE's prices are forecast to continue rising steadily, hopefully, but strongly over the next decade. In terms of trying to create independent supply chain outside of The US, we've entered into an MOU with LCM. LCM are a business that's been in in in around for over fifty years and they take separated with oxides turned into metal and then alloy would say then sell to permanent magnet manufacturers. LCM are doing expansions at the moment in The US, and they're looking for source of separated oxides, and they believe RAINBOW will be one of the projects that will go into construction and into production. Hence, why they signed the the MOU with RAINBOW. They they we we we they targeted RAINBOW some three years ago. So this is this sort of accumulation of of a couple of years of discussion.

10:12 And when they saw our success in the pilot plant, they were happy then to sign an MOU with RAINBOW. And we've also deepened your offtake discussions with various supply chain participants, OEMs on the car manufacturing side, on the wind turbine side. And on the wind turbine side, they seriously are worried about dispersion and terbium supply, and we will be a commercial producer of both of those two key rear product products. In terms of circularity, you know, as I said, we've also entered into an offtake agreement, letter of intent to to with the biggest gypsum trader in South Africa to sell our phospho gypsum that we process and take the rueers out of. Unfortunately, we can't sell all the phosphory gypsum we produce we we we process every year. We're processing 2,200,000 tons.

11:04 We'll be able to sell somewhere between four and six hundred thousand tons per annum into the phosphory gypsum industry because it's it the whole industry is only 1,000,000 tons per annum. But, obviously, over the course of the project and and for another forty plus years, we will continue to sell gypsum into the South African market and eventually, it will be a complete rehabilitation and cleanup of the sites at Pellebora. So it's a very, very strong ESG story, and the fact that we are protecting the environment by what we're doing, we think makes RAINBOW also a compelling story. And then just in terms of diversification, we also signed an MOU with Mosaic, one of the largest fertilizer producers in the world. They're circa $1,415,000,000,000 dollar business, and they've got a large phosphate deposit in Brazil. They've got a large phosphoric acid mine in Brazil acid production process plant in Brazil as well at Ugaraba producing fresh phosphory gypsum and we've entered into an MOU to to use our IP to develop and extract the risk out of the phosphory gypsum on a fifty-fifty basis and we've already released announcements regarding Ubaraba and they're on our website for those who want to go and have a look at more detail about the Ubaraba project, which we are very, very excited about at RAINBOW.

12:20 Once again, it's a very similar hard rock carbonatide producing phosphate slurry, feeding a phosphoric acid mine where they add phosphoric acid plant, I should say, where they add where they add sulfuric acid and heat and they and they create a waste residue or phospho gypsum with RARE EARTHS in it. And then we've had strategic partnership approaches from because of our advancements in the space, because of our positive applications of of our process flow sheet, RAINBOW's IP in terms of producing mixture of carbonate and now producing separated root oxides to the purity level of 96, 97%, We've had approaches from guys in Canada and India and Saudi Arabia, all in the phospho gypsum space, all looking to partner with RAINBOW going forward. So this is opening up a huge addressable market for RAINBOW. The fact that we are getting this technology right, I did announce a delay in our RNS some four weeks ago, but that delay is purely on the fact that I've always said from a technical point of view, we won't take any shortcuts. If it takes six months or nine months longer to get to the right result, it's far more important than going into production with a flow sheet that's not 100% right.

13:34 You'll you'll pay you'll regret it down the line. And having a team that's built many, many mines and processes, process plants around the world, we recognize that this is not something that we wanna do at RAINBOW. It would take a bit longer to get that drive. And the fact that we are getting it right and we will get to the final purity level that we're targeting, 99, 99 and a half percent purity in separated oxides, This is why we are getting these approaches and it's so it's far more important to spend a bit longer getting the tech right because it it will turn RAINBOW into a very diversified project company or a company with with lots of projects around the world, and we believe a multi billion dollar business eventually. Thank you.

14:20 Just in terms of the market, we all know that these arrears are essential for for, as I said, the green green transition. They're currently used in consumer electronics. Until recently, about 50% of all permanent magnets that had rears in them were in the consumer electronic business. In other words, smartphones, speakers, drones, handheld drills, electric scooters, electric motorbikes. And then the last few years has been a massive take up of permanent magnets in the electric vehicles, as well as plug in hybrids which also require electric motors using permanent magnets and also a very strong driver is wind turbines. And then there's also the defense application and the geopolitics we know around the world are not great at the moment and defense is even more key now because every American f 35 fighter jet for instance takes 420 kilograms of rare elements in it.

15:18 Abrams tank has got, I think, two to three tons of rare earths per tank and a like, US submarine, the oh, I can't think of the class name now, but one escapes me. But these bigger submarines got sort of 15 tons of RAREZ limits in them, just to give some examples of the strategic applications in in defense.

15:45 We believe that the trend is unstoppable. It's a global mega trend in terms of EVs. The take up might be a bit slower. We know that the take up has been a bit slower, but it's not going away. We know that, you know, in a lot of countries around the world between 2035 and 2040, you won't be able to buy an internal combustion engine motor, what they call an Us motor vehicle. It's it'll be plug in hybrids and will be full EVs. Plug in hybrids also take up a lot of permanent magnets in their motors, So it's very similar to a full a full EV. And as you know, even though the take up in full EVs have been slow, the take up in the hybrids has been very, strong. So the offset the slow take up in EVs has been more than the take up has been more than offset by by the the plug in hybrid take up. And then roll out to wind turbines, we know that's not going away.

16:39 These wind turbines, three megawatt direct drive wind turbine takes two tons of permanent magnets in it. And of those two tons, six or 700 kilograms or roof elements. So so we all know that wind capacity that's been rolled out offshore is not going away. It's growing very, very strongly. As you can see in 2023, it grew by a 112%, and there's extra 500 gigawatts of offshore wind turbine capacity forecast to be installed by 2034. So massive massive rollout of wind turbine capacity is still on the cards and this is a mega trend as I mentioned. It's not going away in both electric vehicles as well as wind turbines. I was in Toronto just three weeks ago at a at a very large RARE EARTHS conference, the Adamas RARE EARTHS conference in in in Toronto.

17:31 All the major players in the industry were there. And the whole conference was very excited by two new frontiers of permanent magnet demand over the next decade, and these are humanoid robots. And just a week or so, or in fact, two weeks after the Toronto conference, Elon Musk announced the launch of his humanoid robots. At the moment, the humanoid robots have some 36 RARE EARTH magnets in them and they're forecast to go up to 78 permanent magnets, doubling. And the reason why they're doubling is to give humanoid robots full full

18:09 movement similar to to what we as a human have. So this will make these robots able to pick grapes, tie your shoelaces, serve drinks in a bar, pour cocktails, and so forth. So we all know that you've got negative growth rates in China, negative growth rates in Japan, negative growth rates in Europe, and so forth. And certain countries in Europe like Germany, Italy, and, you know, these robots will be able to fulfill a large labor labor demand that will be will will that these countries will be looking to to source them from outside from somewhere, and we believe robots are are going to be able to make up for a lot of this this labor that at the moment, certain western countries are are looking in and China included.

18:57 These these humanoid robots are, as I said, are forecast by 2040. They they said it would be a billion of these built and some forecast is even more aggressive than that. But the amount of red magnets per per robot range from five to 15 kilograms, so that's similar to an EV to three times what's required in an EV depending how sophisticated these robots are. And and this is something that's very real. And and about two months ago, my son was in Los Angeles and he post he sent me a video of a robot doing a pizza delivery in LA. And and he's already received deliveries from Amazon via drone at the moment. So the take up in drones is gonna increase in the commercial area, and we've already seen it starting to replace Uber scooter drivers and the Subaru scooper drivers.

19:56 And this is very real, and this is a trend which is not gonna go away, and it's gonna grow dramatically over the next decade. If you could just show a quick video of that of of this this delivery taking place in LA right now. Thank you. It was my son stopping the robot there to on his way to deliver a pizza or hamburger. But, yeah, this is very real and it's very exciting for for the rare space that we've we've we see massive demand over the next decade taking place in this field. And then in the next frontier is what they call EVTOLS or in in mobility.

20:57 This is electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. Basically, as I mentioned, drone deliveries are gonna get bigger and bigger. The payloads are now up to 40 kilograms. The next payload is going up to a 100 kilograms, and then they're talking up to up to 400 kilograms. EV tolls are basically air taxis, very real. Thirty years ago, we thought this was pure Star Wars and was pure science fiction. Well, it's here today. At the moment, in The US alone, there are four licenses commercial licenses that have been applied for at the FCAA, that's the Federal Civil Aviation Authority, to start air taxi trial runs commercially from two from New York or JFK, one in Chicago, and one in LA. And, basically, these guys will will be able to take you from place like LA to San Diego, which is over an hour's drive in traffic. You'll be able to do that trip in eight minutes, and the price is the same as Uber Black per per kilometer. So for the same price as an Uber Black, you'll do a trip in eight minutes, which will take you an hour, hour and a half in traffic in LA.

22:12 And the the forecast of this type of demand is gonna pick up, as I said, next year. It's a commercial reality. And then in in the next decade between 2013 and 2014, we see a massive massive take up of this type of of mobility and it's a very exciting new frontier for rare earths and permanent magnets. And it's gonna ensure that the megatrend stays in place at even a higher rate. In fact, by 2040, the demand for robots and eVTOLs for permanent magnets will be outstripping electric vehicles, plug in hybrid vehicles, well as wind turbine demand. We all know that, you know, China controls the supply chain for mining, future separation, refining, and magnet manufacturing.

23:03 And this is why there's such a strong diverse focus or strong focus on diversifying supply outside of China. We'll always have supply from China, but it doesn't make sense to rely on one country to dominate so strongly. The moment China dominates about 60% of primary with concentrate production, but over 90% of the downstream beneficiation supply chain is controlled in China. And there's a massive focus, as we all know, to diversify outside of China. And we believe RAINBOW is going to be part of this diversification supply chain, and we will be one of the successful projects which is which is coming into production in the very, very near term. There are lots of development projects out there. Lots of new projects have apparently been full found. In Brazil, for instance, these are highly clay deposits.

23:51 But like the market knows, mining projects take typically between fifteen and twenty five years from discovery to go into production. So, you know, there are there's even though there are new discoveries, these are a long way away. So the near term projects that are going into production, and RAINBOW is certainly one of those. And the project like like Uberaba will also have a very similar short time frame to go into production like we are seeing what we're achieving with Pellebo and RAINBOW.

24:25 It's it's, you know, it's well known about the geopolitics and with tariffs now being imposed on on Chinese electric vehicles and then the Chinese responding with export bans on certain key materials and certainly technology. So this is not going away at the moment. And whether it's a Biden administration of power soon I mean, the the Kamala Harris administration gets into power or it's a Trump administration, they've or bipartisan on the Chinese threat to these critical minerals and that is not going to change whoever is in power in The US in the in the next month. Just a snapshot of of our project once again. On the right hand side, you can see there was a a a pilot of of reclaiming the phosphate gypsum at PELIBOR that we ran in February this year very successfully, and that was part of our our DFS process to to prove that we could reclaim the phosphate gypsum as we envisaged it through through high pressure hoses, and and that was just a photograph of of the time mining that took place. And lots of investors and analysts were on that site visits in in February this year. As I said, we our CapEx and our PEA, which we released in October 22, was circa $300,000,000 With the process flow sheet development, we've been able to achieve by running a large scale pilot plant at Mintech over the last year.

25:51 We believe our capital expenditure will certainly be within that range. The project NPV was based on growth pricing at the time or spot growth pricing at the time of the PEA. And as I said, we've got one of the highest proportions of neodymium, persodium in our basket of any earth projects in the world at just over 29%. And as I said, at spot earth pricing, we believe we would have achieved circa a $190,000,000 of EBITDA with operating margin of over 75%. So very, very strong metrics, financial metrics, and we believe by the time we come into production, which is forecast now for 2027, RARE's pricing will be very similar to where we were in the PEA. Once again, this is to visualize the project at at Peribor.

26:42 What you can't see here is that just on the on on on the the top of of this photograph, you've got the Parabola mining company on our border, literally across the fence. You've got the Foscor phosphate mining company also operating, and they're also producing iron ore out of, let's say, component type deposit that's been mined for sixty years and it's got a life of another forty odd years. The top right hand side, you can see the mothballed phosphoric acid plant that was run by Cecil. They created over a period of sixty years the phospho gypsum stacks that you see. But there's a lot of infrastructure in place, you know, high voltage switch yards in place, the high voltage power line runs through the property. The property's got security fencing already. There's it's served by Blacktop, Hot Top Road. And very importantly, the phosphoric sorry, the Perabore copper mine, which has got a new sulfuric acid plant operating on our border, has got some 10,000 tons of excess sulfuric acid to get rid of every month. We'll be requiring circa 45,000 tons a month of sulfuric acid, and we will be supplied it directly through the fence and at a very, very low cost compared to any other roof project in the world. At the time of our PEA, the phosphoric acid plant phosphoric acid price delivered to The Congo for copper mines in The Congo was $450 a ton, and our PE, it was $95 a ton. That's just give you an idea

28:14 of of how important it is to have this source of sulfuric acid on our doorstep. What's important here is that we've known as your typical mining costs for a mining project. We don't have any crushing or we don't have any drill and blasts. Then we don't have hole to stockpile. Then we don't have crushing, milling, flotation to produce a to produce roof concentrate. Then that roof concentrate in a typical mining project, you have to crack into a chemical form before you can start the separation. And to to crack it, you add sulfuric acid and heat into the mineral concentrate to crack it into a chemical form. At Paloboros, as I mentioned earlier, they add sulfuric acid, they add heat in the phosphoric acid production process and that means that these these two phospho gypsum stacks are chemically cracked and this was a benefit, a huge benefit to the project.

29:08 So two thirds of the flow sheet already taken place for us by the time we start incurring costs to separate the rest out of this phospho gypsum. As I've mentioned, we've got a very low CapEx and very low OpEx. And as you can see, the sensitivity to to RARE EARTHS pricing in a low pricing environment where we have been for the last six months or nine months. You know, RARE EARTH prices a short while ago were circa $47.48 dollars a kg for NDPR. We're now sitting circa $60 a kg for NDPR. But it's been more publicized that these low roof prices had very few. In fact, no western roof projects can make money at these prices.

29:55 And it was by the chairman of Iluka. And even the Chinese have indicated that these low prices, are are betting to break even. If you look at this chart on the left hand side, it's 78 spot $4.06. That's the rainbow basket at current rate pricing, which is circa $60 a kg for NDPR. But the reason why our basket is higher at 78.46 is because we've got dysprosium and terbium in our basket, which are very, very highly priced rare earths. And that means the average basket price currently is 78. And at $78 a kg, if you look on the right hand axis, we we would still be making circa $80,000,000 per annum of EBITDA. We don't we don't believe there's any road project in the world right now that would be making $80,000,000 of EBITDA per annum at at current RARE's pricing. So just this slide just demonstrates how resilient we are to to RARE's pricing at the moment in terms of the the low pricing environment.

30:56 And of course, as RARE EARTHS prices continue to rise, it's only going to be very positive for RAINBOW going forward.

31:05 We've mentioned that this is a very good ESG story. So we believe we are responsible producer of RARE's. It's a brownfield site. It's a closed loop. We're gonna be rehabilitating those sites, depositing those stacks, redepositing them onto your line stack site to obviously principles. At the moment, those stacks are online because sixty years ago, there was no legislation forcing people to line stacks of this nature. We will be lining these stacks and selling this benign gypsum into the South African market, and we'll be using some of the infrastructure again. So it's a very much a circular closed loop story and we believe bodes very well for us being a very, very green producer of of permanent magnet materials that go into permanent magnets.

31:55 Just as I said, we're in a unique position in the rare supply chain. You know, we don't have a lot of the upstream processes that make, you know, are very expensive for RARE EARTHS projects. We got no mining, as I mentioned earlier, no concentration, no cracking. We start off with a crack chemical gypsum stockpiles and we go straight into separation. You know, separation using traditional solvent extraction, which we as a team understand very well. You got two, three, 4,000 stages of of of what they call mixer settlers and solvent extraction, which is why it's so detrimental to the environment in China. And we have continuous ion exchange. We will have two steps of continuous ion exchange and three steps of continuous ion chromatography.

32:43 So far, far smaller footprint which will be apparent to the market in the next couple of months when our producer fly through of of the footprint of this project compared to the footprint of other roof projects. So I believe puts RAINBOW in a very unique position. As I said, our primary flow sheet that we've been able to prove is is through massive and extensive piloting that we've undertaken over the last year. We, you know, we ran a large scale pilot plant at Mintech. When I say large scale, our feed rate for this pilot plant was 20 kilograms per hour. A typical mineral processing pilot plant runs at between two sort of three to five kilograms per hour of feed rate. So we use circa 10 to 20 times larger than a normal pilot plant and we ran extensive leach testing and as I said, we produced some 35 kilograms of mid growth carbonate, which proves that RAINBOW is now derisked if we stopped at the carbonate stage. But once again, as I said, we were able to also simplify our flow sheet from the PEA. I've made a large announcement on this. It was on our website and the r and s some four weeks ago where we went into detail about the optimization, the steps we've been able to take out of the PEA flow sheet, which all bode well for CapEx and OpEx for the DFS and which will also result in a smaller footprint, which is also very beneficial for the

34:14 project. As I said, as you can see here, this was the PA flow sheet that we initially priced and developed in October 22. And all those colored blocks in in light purple are the areas that we've been able to optimize and remove, which bodes well for the for the DFS going forward. And as I said, there's more detail of this on on our website. We are very proud of RAINBOW that we always go into detail in our announcements when on a that are of a technical nature. We make sure that the market's got confidence that the technical team know what they're doing and, you know, and we've only just kept that enough detail that that protects our IP and what we've been able to develop at RAINBOW.

34:59 We also then successfully shipped Carbonate to our back end pilot plant in America. You can see a photograph of it there, Highly sophisticated, controlled with a very large amount of software. And and at this stage, we saw very good separation of what they call the ACG group, has got potential for revenue stream that wasn't in the PEA that we're looking to for the DFS. And basically, we've achieved successful separation of NDPR up to 96, 97% purity level, which we've as I've mentioned, we've deemed as a saleable product. And our next steps are now that we announced in an announcement some four weeks ago that we are taking this pilot plant from Florida to South Africa to reassemble it and run it because we've recognized that we need recirculate recirculating streams from the back end from the front end into the back end and and vice versa, going backwards and forwards again to maintain our overall recovery rate of 66%.

36:04 66% recovery of rivers from your initial feedstock is a very, high recovery rate in the rears market, and we wanna protect that. And also, we also realize that the waste streams that the final waste streams that come come out of that that that can pile up plant have to be deposited somewhere. And at the moment, we can co deposit these with the with the gypsum that goes back onto the gypsum stack. The these waste streams came into the front end as part of the phosphate gypsum and they'll then be fed back onto into the phosphate gypsum and and co deposited back onto the stack. So we don't have any environmental issues. Whereas if we had at one stage, we thought we could maybe build a separation plant in The US as a standalone project, we would have the problem that we would impact our overall recovery, which wouldn't make sense.

36:57 And lastly, we would then have to apply for permitting for these waste streams. And even though there's only trace elements of uranium and thorium which came into the with the feed will go back with with the waste stream as I mentioned. In America, that would require extensive permitting and how long is a piece of string, you know. We all know in America that if you have a permanent site, it counts for a huge amount and I never understood that until I was involved in The US and realized that these permits can take anywhere from three to ten years to get permitted these sites. Environmental permitting, restrict regulations in US would would mean that I wouldn't be able to put my hand in my heart and tell you when we'd be in production in The US with the final stage separation because I wouldn't know how long that permitting would take place. So by bringing it back to South Africa, it made sense on a number of fronts and that's what exactly what we've done.

37:53 Just to give you a timeline, as I've mentioned, we've we've in 2024, we've given a resource update. We're moving the pilot plant back to South Africa. We've which, you know, the the the MINITED pilot plant was sort of those final runs were finished in May, June this year. The the and we've and during the course of this year, we've run the the pilot plant at in The US and Florida, and we've achieved those separation results I've spoken about. So I think we've had a very successful pilot plant and operations in both the front end and the back end during the course of this year. We are, as I've mentioned, we will be dropping out some interim interim report before the end of this year circa early December, which will then be able to footprint the economics and the the CapEx of the project very close to the DFS level of accuracy.

38:49 And I believe it'll we'll be able to confirm that our PA numbers were were were very, good numbers, very conservative numbers. And as I said, we will then be able to on on the back of this, we'll produce a fly through video of what the pilot plant or not the pilot, what the commercial scale pop the commercial scale plant will look like. Sorry for getting my my plants twisted there. But the commercial scale pilot plant and this the market will be able to see exactly the footprint of this plant and how small it is compared to a traditional plant, which once again, as I said, is very good for for the economics and the CapEx of the project. Environmental work is well underway. It's we're about 80% done on on on the EIA permitting and the environmental for the DFS.

39:38 We gypsum stack design has been done by Ottoman in The US. The global world experts in gypsum stack design. They've designed and built over a 100 gypsum stacks globally. Ottoman will be network. They'll be finished at DFS level before the end of the year. And we've got the front end reclaim portion of the DFS will be complete at DFS standard by by before the end of the year. So we're well on the way with large parts of our DFS will be complete by the end of the year. It's just the final stage that's led to a slight delay in the DFS, which will be completed during 2025, and we'll be and also and still the interim report will be kicking off our project financing, and we are still forecasting production for 2027.

40:27 So that's the corporate team. You can look at this at your leisure. We do have this footprint which is highlighting global opportunities that we have at the moment. You know, we've got Uberaba in Brazil, which is going along very nicely. And as I said, you can look at the announcements, the RNS announcements surrounding Uberaba. We've had approaches from India, Saudi Arabia, and and Canada. We have a long term opportunity with OCP in Morocco, and we've got our flagship project moving very strongly ahead in Parabola in South Africa. As I said, why RAINBOW? Well, we've been able to achieve the first commercial production of red elements from phosphogypsum. It's one of the highest margin rare projects in development today.

41:12 We've got a unique flow sheet that's cheaper, safer, more environmentally friendly than traditional solvent extraction. We've got strong support from an independent verification of our process through the DFC, through TechNet, and then investments via TechNet, and through Cora as well. So we think, you know, we are on the cusp of unlocking a huge global opportunity for those cost and responsible supplier of RARE EARTHS from Fosto Gypsum. Thank you very much. And at your leisure, you can this is on our website, and you can go into the appendices at your leisure where there's even more information for your for your analysis. Thank you very much for your time. Perfect, George. That's great. And thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab that's situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while the company takes a few moments just to review those questions that were submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can all be accessed via your investor dashboard.

42:17 George, as you can see there, we have received a number of questions that were both presubmitted ahead of today's event as well as those that have made their way through during your presentation this morning as well. So firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. And, George, at this point, sir, if I may just hand back to you just to read out those questions, give your responses where it's appropriate to do so. If And I pick up from you at the end, that would be great. Thank you. Thanks very much. The first question is, is a RARE EARTHS LIMITED product from the pilot plant able to be sold? Well, I'm not sure if this question is, are we gonna sell what we're producing in the pilot plant? Answer is no because this is used for marketing and for sending to various off take OEMs that we're in discussions with. But if we stopped at where we are, as I said, at 96 or 97% purity, yes, we've established that this could be sold. But as I said, we are optimizing.

43:10 We're very confident that in our optimization process taking place in South Africa, once the pilot plant gets here shortly, that we will get our targeted purity level. Next question is, Kakaraburundi update, please. We have had a couple of discussions with the government this year. There's a World Bank report published about four weeks ago on the mining industry in Burundi, supported RAINBOW as being the only or the best responsible miner in Burundi. And as we know, they suspended all mining activity in Burundi, not just RAINBOW. And we've recently been told by the government that we we we were in negotiations with them. We gave them a proposal, and now we've heard from the government that they want to invite RAINBOW back for negotiations. We presume to discuss our proposal. So hopefully, it'll be positive news shortly on BRAINBOW. But I might stress that Burundi is a very, very small part of RAINBOW going forward. Our key project is PALABOWA followed by UBERABWA, and then the other opportunities I've highlighted.

44:11 The next question is, how long will the current cash position last? Is the DFS the recent announced date delay completely covered now? Yes. The DFS is completely covered even with the delay. We will fund it into the fourth quarter of twenty twenty five. The next question is could you expand on why 99% purity for NDPL was not possible to achieve? It is matter of trial and error. Is it a matter of trial and error adjusting the parameters or equipment related to something else? The 96% purity, although saleable, would be a disappointment for many investors. I fully agree with taking the time to properly optimize the flow sheet in a way is the way to go forward and and is better in the long run?

44:56 How confident are you that your team can achieve the 99 purity production? It's a good question. And, as I mentioned, we've achieved 96 or 97%. That's through two passes of the CRC unit in Florida. What we've realized is that, you know, we've always said we will need a third pass, but more importantly that we need to remove even more deleterious elements or basically impurities from the phospho gypsum feed before we go into the final stage separation. We've introduced a continuous ion exchange step at the front end pilot plant in South Africa. So and also with the recirculating modes, in other words, so as you scavenge your purity of your pregnant lead solution on the resin and these columns and the continuous ion exchange columns, you always leave a bit of risk behind.

45:50 And by recirculating those loads from the front from the back end into the front end, you you recapture those rears that are in in solution, you never actually lose them. So you actually get a 100% of of of of extraction from the back end by by never never losing those roofs that you keep recirculate recirculating. And that's why we'll achieve overall 66 recovery, which is very, very critical. As I said, the the team at RAINBOW have over the last four years have purely worked on this phosphory gypsum. They understand not only the front end process unbelievably well, they also have a huge amount of knowledge now on the back end separation. They've been working with k with KTEC and the RP that is in Florida and our team are very confident that by tweaking the the eluance and just the type of resin that we'll get the final purity level. And we might have to go to a fourth step of of CRC to get that final purity.

46:49 Basically, each each step you get high and higher purity. We always thought we'd get it in in in three steps, but if we had to go to a fourth step, there wouldn't be a train smash to get to the purity level because that final stage separation, the size of that plant would be basically the size of the pilot plant that you've seen in the photograph or you can go back and look at under your own time. So what I'm saying is that the flow is reduced so much between each step in these in these processes that by the time if we had to introduce a fourth step, the pilot plant size that we see there would be sufficient to get that final stage purity. So we are very confident as I mentioned. Economically, would you consider adding another purifying step into the current stage? Yes, I've just answered that question. Thank you.

47:39 The Chinese have lots of expertise. The question is the Chinese have lots of expertise and dominate the sector. Would you consider JV with them? The answer is no. As I said, we see ourselves as part of independent supply chain. And one of the conditions of $50,000,000 in equity financing at the project level from the DFC is that we only support Western supply chains. So that would mean South Korea, Japan, Western Europe, Canada, America and so forth. Do you think RAINBOW will be able to economically extract various from sedimentary phospho gypsum stacks within the next ten years? That is a good question and this basically talks to the OCP MOU we have.

48:28 The phospho there is a net phospho gypsum is very, very, very low compared to carbonatide sources of phospho gypsum. So to answer the question is that we we basically got free option here. If it takes us if we, over the next ten years, could could develop a way to upgrade the arrears and net phosphory gypsum and then develop a economic flow sheet, we would obviously do it within RAINBOW. And that's why it's basically a long term long term option. But as I said, our focus right now is on carbonatide sources of phosphoryl gypsum, which is some of the approaches that we've had. Is the radioactive content of Ubarabo phosphoryl gypsum tailings comparable to Palobor? Yes. It is comparable. I think if I can remember, it's marginally lower. So, yes, very, very low and very positive for the project.

49:22 Has the patent application been submitted to front end flow sheet? To be honest with you, no. We haven't submitted it because we realized that we're gonna going to be optimizing the front end flow sheet and making changes as you've seen in my presentation. So once we have developed the flow sheet, then we'll take a decision whether we want to patent it or not. To be honest with you, we're not sure if patent's the right way to go because when you patent something, you have to lay out everything in detail in your patent to that's the only way you can get a patent. And, basically, that means we will be opening ourselves up for somebody else to see exactly what our IP is. And at the moment, our strength is that we've developed IP. It's in house. No one quite knows how we're doing it, and we are way ahead of everybody else in the game. So we're the the front runners. So I think it's case of basically gonna be like an like an Uber or an Uber Eats. They were the first on the block, and and they were so far ahead of the market before other people copied them, they are still the leaders. And we believe RAINBOW is in a similar position. So it's not 100% certain whether it makes sense to to to do a patent or not, but we'll evaluate it once we've nailed down.

50:32 So once we realize there aren't any more optimization steps on our front end flow sheet. At which stage will the Palabora project is envisaged that the TechNet 50,000,000 could be made available to RAINBOW. The terms of that 50,000,000 are on the publication of of our definitive feasibility study and and when we have a financing term sheet. And then that 50,000,000 flows as equity into the project. Can you give a estimate of the discount in percentage terms should the product not reach 99% purity and we're stuck at 97%? To be honest with you, as I've mentioned, the mixture of carbonate, which we know we can sell all day long, is around about 70% payability.

51:19 And if you think 99, 95 and a half percent purity is a 100% payability, it's gonna be somewhere in that range. I don't know a 100% for sure, but I would imagine it's somewhere between a 10 maximum 15 discount. But it's purely my opinion. We have not physically tried to to go and and and get pricing in the market because we we are we don't believe we we need to. We believe we'll be at 99 plus percent purity. Is it feasible to boost the extraction rate by introducing a second extraction circuit? Of course, it's feasible, but to be honest with you, we we think that what we intend to produce at Pellobor is more than enough as a first pass.

52:05 We could always look, you know, if we introduce another plant, it will reduce the timeline of the project quite significantly and that doesn't make sense. But certainly at Uberaba where we are looking at extracting the risk from the live phospho gypsum feed, they will believe we'll have two modules producing roots out of out of their phospho gypsum. I'm just looking for any other any other any other questions here that I might need to answer? Just a question on my presentation whether it will be updates on the website. Yes. It has been updated. It's there.

52:57 So how are you protecting your IP for your processing? Let's once again, to the patent application. I've mentioned the patent application. It we're not sure it makes 100% sense because you then outline all your IP in the patent application, and we'll we'll take a decision on that at the right time. Might RAINBOW have any interest in partnering other miners to process the carbonate into OREO? As I said, we have approaches from other projects at the moment, but that's to take the rears out of the fossil gypsum that they are producing through a similar process that we saw at Talibor and Ubaraba.

53:42 And if this was fossil gypsum produced from a hard rock carbonatite or ironic clay, technically, I suppose we could look at at partnering people. So the the answer is not no, but at the moment, we've got our hands full with the opportunities we have already at the moment, to be honest with you. RAINBOW has secured attractive funding and solution through a royalty agreement, further derisking the project. Will RAINBOW apply for DFC funding? As I've mentioned, we already have DFC funding committed through an equity deal we've done with the DFC of $50,000,000, but we'll be certainly talking to the DFC on has been a partner in the project financing package that we'll be looking at for RAINBOW.

54:30 We anticipate if we still stick at a $10,000,000 CapEx number, that we'll have $200,000,000 of debt, $100,000,000 of equity. 50 of that equity is already spoken for by the DFC, as I mentioned. So and the DFC have indicated they would like to talk to us on the debt package as well. So we will definitely be talking to them on part of that $200,000,000 debt package. Just to conclude, I'm trying to think any other questions here. Which quarter are you anticipating breaking even? Obviously, this is a question for when we get into production. As I've indicated, our time our timelines have been I mentioned earlier that we are looking to go into production twin early twenty twenty, we'll be commissioning beginning of twenty seven.

55:19 This has moved out slightly by the delay in the DFS as I've owned and alluded to you while I mentioned in our announcement four weeks ago, but we're still forecasting being in production in 2027 in the last quarter oh, sorry, in the second half of twenty seven. And this type of plant to ramp up to full production and full sort of revenue is very short compared to a mining project. We don't have, large scale stockpiles and faces to to mine, to to build up stopes for your mine plan, which takes a long time when you when you're commissioning a new mining project, and then your plant itself takes a long time for the gold to come out of what they call lockup in the mill and so forth, and then your carbon in each circuit and your carbon inventory of gold. So it takes quite a lot longer for for for this to come out.

56:10 And this is a mineral processing. As I said, the throughput will be achieved very, very quickly in terms you'll get up to man nameplate throughput very quickly and and production of the d y sorry, of the NDPR and eventually DY TV, we believe will also be fairly quickly. So, you know, I can't give an exact answer, but it's far shorter timeline than the typical mining project. Thank you. I hope I've answered all the questions adequately, and I think it my time is almost up. And I would like to thank everybody for spending the time this morning to to get an update on RAINBOW, to see the progress we've made, and to listen to the answers to the questions I've been asked. Thanks very much to everybody. George, that's great. And thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time there and addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this morning. And, of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended just for you to review to then add any additional responses, of course, where it's appropriate to do so. And we'll publish all those responses out on the platform.

57:12 But, George, all that leaves, I guess, is for me to thank you once again for updating you Jake. Just just one question I think I need to answer. Yeah? Absolutely. Before you sign off is, will we achieve any value for the IP when, as you say, it is rolled out globally? The answer to that question I think I've answered, which is that we've had these independent approaches from projects in India, Canada, and so forth, Saudi Arabia to partner with RAINBOW because they see the value of our IP. So, yes, you know, as these partnerships develop, like UberRiver partnership, we will soon see the value that this brings to RAINBOW over the next course of the next sort of six to twelve months. Thanks very much. Perfect, George. Thank you. And thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session? It shall now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can really better understand your views and expectations.

58:05 This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'd be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of management team of RAINBOW RARE EARTHS LIMITED, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good morning to you all.