Modern Mining March 2015

DIAMONDS

mid-tier diamond miner

that our kimberlite could be a large stone producer.” After relocating the

years with Southern Era, which at that time owned the Marsfontein diamond mine in South Africa. Smithson describes Baoulé – located in the Aredor diamond district of Guinea – as an attractive deposit which could ultimately evolve into a mid-size open-pit mine. “The pipe is 5 ha in extent and was discovered in 1999 by a Canadian company,” he says. “It was sub- sequently drilled and bulk sampled by, among others, Rio Tinto. We acquired the project with a local partner in late 2013 and our work since then – all internal and non-JORC compliant at this stage – points to us having a plus 20 Mt resource containing 3,3 million carats. We’re hoping to do a bit more drilling this year to get to 5 million carats. “We’re expecting to get a good price for Baoulé’s diamonds. We believe at least US$200 per carat is possible for the long term run of mine given that a small parcel of diamonds sold in 2000 by a previous operator yielded US$157 per carat. The really interesting point is whether Baoulé can deliver large stones. Alluvial miners in the area have recovered a number of stones of over 100 carats and a couple exceeding 200 carats, one of 284 carats and another of 255 carats, so we are optimistic

requisite plant and e q u i pme n t f r om Mandala (and a sec- ond Stellar project in Guinea, Droujba) in the second and third quarters of last year, Stellar started trial mining in the eastern

lobe at Baoulé in October. Says Smithson: “Our strat- egy over the next year or so will be to mine at a rate sufficient to

deliver between 100 000 and 200 000 tonnes of kimberlite to the plant over this period and we would expect this could yield up to 2 000 carats per month over the course of 2015. The trial mining – apart from generating cash flow – will give us a good handle not only on grade and value but also the frequency and distribu- tion of large stones. All this data will inform our decision as to whether or not we should proceed to mining on a commercial scale. Our current thinking is that commercial min- ing would see the tonnage mined and treated

Gem quality diamonds recovered at Baoulé.

Mining operations at Baoulé in February this year.

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