JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) - London-listed Rainbow Rare Earths has set the ramp-up of production at its Gakara mine, in Burundi, and the completion of the first phase drilling programme, as its priorities for the next six months.

The company on Wednesday described the six months ended December 31, as "a busy and highly productive period for Rainbow, during which we began production of rare earth concentrate from one of the highest-grade projects globally on schedule and on budget."

During this period, the initial mine at Gasagwe developed from an area which had undergone manual pre-stripping work only, to an operational mine site.

At the same time, the plant site at Kabezi went from being an area which had been cleared and levelled, to the site of an operating plant which had, by the end of 2017, completed the first two exportations of mineral concentrate.

Rare earth prices also strengthened over the period, buoyed by growing demand from green technologies such as hybrid and electric vehicles.

As owners of Africa's only producing rare earth mine, and one of only a few outside China, Rainbow states that it is well placed to take advantage of the burgeoning rare earth market.

Although the focus was on constructing the plant and commencing production during 2017, ground gravity and airborne radiometric surveys undertaken during the period identified some highly prospective, and large, anomalies within Rainbow's licence area.

In December, the company successfully completed a share placement to raise $3.5-million to finance an exploration programme to investigate anomalies, as well as to accelerate production growth through expanding the mining fleet.

With the focus on mining operations and construction at the Kabezi plant, exploration activity was limited during the six months; however, the work undertaken yielded some exciting results, the company said.

Stream sampling and geo-traversing mapping continued throughout the year, and by December 31, 69 new rare earth element (REE) occurrences had been found across the licence area.

A total of 1 168 REE occurrences have now been found at Gakara, to date.

A ground gravity survey was conducted at Kiyenzi, one of the prospects where high grade bastnaesite/monazite boulders had been found on the slope of the hill, to try to locate the source of the REE material.

A drill programme for the first and second quarter of 2018 is currently under way, which will initially target these prospects.
 
If the initial results of drilling, which are anticipated in April 2018, are successful, the company expects to progress to a second phase drilling campaign, and to announce a maiden Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant resource during the second half of this year.

It also expects to increase production at Gakara to 5 000 t/y by the end of this year.