LONDON (Alliance News) - BlueRock Diamonds PLC Wednesday said it is progressing with trial mining operations, has recovered its first diamonds, and has completed improvement works on its processing plant at Kareevlei in South Africa .
The diamond exploration and production company, which was admitted to the AIM market in September 2013, said it has now excavated a further roughly 70,000 tonnes of ore from the K1 and K2 pipes at Kareevlei since December and has encountered weathered kimberlite, the igneous rock known for containing diamonds, at expected lower levels.
The company said roughly 750 tonnes of diluted kimberlite mixture has been processed through the company's processing plant and sorted, while drilling and blasting of its open pit has now been completed with processing expected to occur during March.
BlueRock added that further work to improve the crushing circuits in order to increase the front-end capacity at the processing plant was completed in January, and the plant has now operated at sustained periods above the expected 25 tonnes per hour.
The company said it continues to expect that operational capacity of 12,000 tonnes per month is achievable using the existing plant during the trial mining phase.
BlueRock said it has recovered its first diamonds from initial processing, but the volume processed was too small to be statistically significant. It plans to assess recovery on a continuous basis and will report findings in due course.
However, the company also noted that due to heavy rain during the first half of February, the processing plant was only fully operational towards the end of the month.
BlueRock shares were up 12% to 14.26 pence, putting it in the top five AIM risers Wednesday.
By Tom McIvor; tommcivor@alliancenews.com; @TomMcIvor1
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