Modern Mining March 2015

DIAMONDS

Stellar poised to emerge as a

Stellar Diamonds plc, a junior diamond mining company whose shares are quoted on London’s AIM, seems to be heading for mid-tier status, with an ambitious trial mining exercise underway at its Baoulé open-pit kimberlite project in Guinea and the development of a fissure mine – the Tongo Dyke-1 project – in Sierra Leone imminent. Modern Mining’s Arthur Tassell recently caught up with Stellar’s CEO, Karl Smithson, at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town to learn more about the projects.

E xplaining the history of Stellar, Smithson says it was formed in 2007 as a spin-off of Mano River Resources, a company originally founded in the 1990s by well- known resources entrepreneur Guy Pas (who was, incidentally, also a co-founder of Samax Resources, which did much of the early devel- opment work on the Geita gold project in Tan- zania). Mano River itself merged with African Aura Resources in 2009. The latter has since morphed into Aureus Mining which is devel- oping the New Liberty gold mine in Liberia. Smithson joined Mano River in 2000 and in his first few years with the company was instru- mental in building up the portfolio of diamond assets which allowed Stellar to be established as a standalone venture in 2007 and to list on

AIM in 2010. He has managed Stellar as CEO since its inception and has, over the years, successfully raised over £15 million in equity for the company. He also transformed Stellar from a pure exploration company into a junior miner/explorer. The company mined 128 000 carats from the alluvial Mandala deposit in south-east Guinea between 2009 and 2011 and plant and equipment used on this project has now been deployed at Baoulé. Although he is based in the UK, Smithson – who is a geologist – spends much of his time in West Africa. He is also no stranger to Southern Africa. Earlier in his career, he spent 10 years with De Beers in Botswana and Zimbabwe and in fact was De Beers’ Exploration Manager in Zimbabwe. In between leaving De Beers and joining Mano River, he also spent a couple of

Karl Smithson, Chief Executive Officer of Stellar Diamonds.

Trial mining underway at Baoulé in November 2014. The project is located in the Aredor diamond district of Guinea.

24  MODERN MINING  March 2015