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Send  Share  RSS  Twitter  25 Apr 2013

MARITIME: Not quite as bright as forecast for Afri-Can

 



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MARINE diamond miner Afri-Can Minerals Corporation (Afri-Can,) which scours for gems off the Namaqualand and Namibian coastlines, has secured an option agreement with Diamond Fields International (DFI) to acquire a 90% interest in several diamond mining leases off Luderitz.

  One of the leases, Mining Lease 111, reportedly hosts an historical diamond resource of 950,000 carats of gem quality diamonds.

  Late last month Afri-Can said the option agreement was valid for two years, and to clinch the acquisition the company will need to spend US$800,000 (±R7,5m) on exploration in the first year, and another US$2,5m (± R23m) in the second year.

  Afri-can said it planned to carry out a geophysical survey covering 1,000 line kilometers and a sampling program of a minimum of 400 samples.

The DFI deal follows news that Afri-Can’s lofty production ambitions have suffered an early setback at its much-mooted EPL 3403 concession.

The company has seen its share on the Toronto Stock Exchange fall from a high of 22c in late August, to just 6c at the time of writing. The weakness in the share price was no doubt prompted by mediocre results from the company’s sampling programme in December.

A good deal of Afri-Can’s exploration funding was raised from Cape Town investors (who have traditionally enjoyed the high risk/high reward nature of marine diamond mining with companies like Ocean Diamond Mining, Namco and Benco.) While these investors must be miffed at the share price collapse, a cursory glance at the company’s website provides no evidence of hitches in the company’s development.

  In fact, the press release detailing the results of the much-vaunted sampling programme undertaken in December, claims the effort confirmed the potential of EPL 3403.

EPL 3403 covers roughly 800 km2, and is adjacent to the north of the Atlantic One Mining Lease, which is owned by De Beers subsidiary Namdeb Diamond Corporation. ML 47 is regarded as the largest marine diamond deposit in the world and currently produces more than 1,1m carats per year.

But a closer look at Afri-Can’s sampling data might leave more cynical observers with a different conclusion. Certainly there appears to be no confirmation that EPL 3403 could match the rich yields at De Beer’s Atlantic One.

Afri-Can, which industry observers believed might be capable of pulling at least 100,000 carats in its first year of production – disclosed that its extracted 222 samples of 5m2 each to recover (wait for it) 17 diamonds weighing between 0.05 and 0.75 carats. That’s a total weight of 4,55 carats … a rather underwhelming haul.

The breakdown of the sampling showed the West Bank region yielding 16 diamonds, which means that if the 2011 sampling results are added in there is a total haul of 34 diamonds.

 Only one diamond was recovered from the Plateau Region on the western edge of the West Bank region.

 Another 22 samples were taken from the Crater region, but no diamonds were recovered. There were also no diamonds recovered from 11 samples in The Ridges region, while the East Bank and Side Channel regions – where 40 samples were taken – produced just one diamond.

Afri-Can CEO Pierre Léveillé appeared to put on a brave face. He argued that the results of the first phase of the sampling program were satisfying and would lead to resource development as well as eventual trial mining on targeted areas. “We feel that we are sitting on a strong project in a very solid industry.”

  Leveille said the West Bank Region would be the focus of detailed drilling in the up-coming sampling phase and, eventually, of a trial mining program.

  The second phase sampling programme is expected to comprise about 300 samples, and will start once the Vessel Mv DP The Explorer becomes available.

 

 


 
 
 
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