Darryll Castle has been appointed nonexecutive director of London-listed Rainbow Rare Earths, which owns the Phalaborwa project, in South Africa, and the Gakara project, in Burundi.

His appointment is pursuant to the nomination right held by TechMet, as set out in Rainbow’s recent private placement announcement in May, whereby TechMet may nominate one director to the board for as long as it holds at least 10% of the issued shares in the company.

Further to its major participation in the private placement, TechMet now holds 12% of Rainbow’s issued share capital.

Castle is currently TechMet operations director. With a background in engineering, he has over 30 years’ experience across company leadership, project and operational delivery and transformation, technical planning and implementation, fund management, business development and governance roles.

Through his extensive career he has served as an executive director of a number of mining and production companies including as CEO of Trafigura Mining Group, CEO of PPC Cement and CEO of Anvil Mining, where he was said to be instrumental in completing the sale of Anvil Mining to China Minmetals for $1.3-billion, and COO at Metorex Group, as well as multiple board memberships of listed and private companies.

Castle has first-hand operations and projects experience globally including in Cuba, Spain, Peru, and particularly on the African continent, having run projects and companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania.

Castle is a South African national and holds a BSc in Civil Engineering from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a BComm from the University of South Africa, an MBA and a Chartered Financial Analyst qualification.

Within the last five years, Castle was also a director of Basil Read Holdings.

“We are delighted to welcome Darryll to the board. His extensive mining and operating experience globally, but particularly across Africa, will be highly valuable to Rainbow.

“He is joining the company at a critical point as we are set to deliver on the operation of the Phalaborwa pilot plant over the coming months, both via the delivery of a mixed rare earth sulphate from the plant front end in South Africa and via the delivery of separated rare earth oxides from the plant back end in the US. We look forward to working with Darryll at this exciting juncture for the company,” says Rainbow CEO George Bennett.