The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
No they are not on the same line or trend. The Connonish mine, along with Cavanacaw and Galantas in NI are on the Dalradian trend. These are working high grade (~15g/t) underground mines.
Clontibret etc. are on a much younger trend to the south. It is much lower grade (~2g/t) and has no developed mines to date, so the mining feasibility is unproven, but it will likely have to be open-pit on a much larger scale this trend is associated with arsenic (around 700 × the gold content), not silver.
DYR
So Karelian has finally, after four years and three months, been granted a right of way by the neighbours to actually cross tgeur land and set foot on its flagship project? And we were unaware that they couldn't all along?
It begs the question how did predecessors Ashton Mining, European Diamonds and then Mantle Diamonds manage to drill, excavate a massive pit, and bulk sample the kimberlite over a period of ten or more years?
So all this time Karelian has been in a far weaker position than any of the earlier operators?
Some clarity for shareholders please!
A photo available here:
ttps://www.middiamonds.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/COULD-FINLAND-BE-THE-SITE-OF-THE-NEXT-DIAMOND-MOTHERLODE_-photo-1.jpg
Circular to shareholders September 2019
...the Company has a Confidentiality Agreement (with back-in rights) in place with Rio Tinto Mining and Exploration Limited, one of the largest mining companies in the world.
This Confidentiality Agreement has been in place since July 2010 and runs through to 30 June 2020.
The existing Board strongly believes that it is important to build on this exploration success,
rather than abandon it. The Board acknowledges that it will take time, unless there is a significant
increase in the funds available. However, the Board believes that the Requisitionists and their likely actions, if they were to become directors of the Company, could result in the Company failing to meet its licence obligations, and abandoning of the work done to date.
Rio have no interest or reason to extend after ten years of zero progress, even if it costs them nothing to do so.
Why should they be generous enough to throw Conroy this face-saving lifeline, in the expectation that he will mercilessly plug it, considering the reputational damage, no matter how small, it might cause to them.
From KDR (managements) perspective extending the deal just places them under yet more continuous Shareholder pressure to actually do something, so I imagine for them it is best that it just quietly lapses so they can forget about it (similarly with Lahtojoki?).
They only want "assets" in order to support their main business, which is spinning a story to extract cash from investors and to support their lifestyle.
They would be much happier if everyone, including Shareholders, just left them alone to get on with drawing up a few maps in Dublin, for their agents in Helsinki to submit for reservation applications, and having the GTK take a few samples every year, leaving them focus on the main business, which is:
Drafting optimistic news releases, flying to London to do road shows and interviews, flying their family members home for reunions (sorry, board meetings), flying to Canada to attend conferences, flying to Finland to take city breaks in Helsinki and maybe visiting a few tourist attractions for photo-ops.
JMHO
CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENT WITH RIO TINTO MINING AND EXPLORATION LIMITED EXTENDED TO 2020
Amendment Letter Signed with Rio Tinto to Extend Confidentiality Agreement
(with Back in Rights)
Under the Confidentiality Agreement Confidential Information and Geological Samples may be Made Available to Karelian by Rio Tinto
51 per cent. Back in Agreement with Rio Tinto for any Major Diamond or Other Mineral Discovery in Finland
Karelian Diamond Resources plc (“Karelian”) (AIM:KDR, ESM: KDR.I), the diamond exploration company focussed on the Karelian Craton in Finland, is pleased to announce that it has signed an amendment letter to extend the existing Confidentiality Agreement (with Back in Rights), as announced on 22 July 2010, with Rio Tinto Mining and Exploration Limited (“Rio Tinto”) until 30 June 2020.
Under the Confidentiality Agreement, Rio Tinto may disclose to Karelian confidential information and physical geological samples relating to exploration in Finland for the purpose of Karelian considering that information in relation to Karelian’s potential and existing exploration programmes in Finland.
In consideration of Rio Tinto disclosing the confidential information to it, Karelian has agreed that Rio Tinto will have the option (exercisable at its discretion) to earn a 51 per cent interest in any project identified by Karelian in Finland by Rio Tinto paying the direct cash expenditures incurred in developing the project subject to the following conditions:
1. For diamond projects the option will be triggered if Karelian completes 10 tons or more of bulk sampling for diamond exploration; and
2. For all other minerals the option will be triggered if Karelian discovers a resource with an in situ value that is equal to or greater than 3 million ounces of gold in a JORC compliant resource calculation.
The Karelian Craton, which is the focus of Karelian’s exploration programme in Finland extends across Finland and northwest Russia and is comparable in size to the diamond rich Slave Lake Craton in Canada. Two world class diamond deposits, Lomonosova and the Grib Pipe, have been discovered in the Russian sector of the Karelian Craton and the Russian company, Alrosa, which is the world’s largest diamond miner, has indicated that this new diamond region will represent almost all its future growth.
Professor Richard Conroy, Chairman, commented:
“I am delighted that this Confidentiality Agreement with Rio Tinto has been extended until 2020. This has been a very positive relationship in which the confidential information and physical samples made available to Karelian have been a major addition to Karelian’s existing knowledge base and mineral exploration programme and to its objective of making a major diamond discovery in the Finnish sector of the
Karelian Craton comparable to the world class discoveries made on the Russian side.”
The ones announced 18 months ago and not a dicky bird since, Liperi and Sala were announced in Feb/Mar 2019 (awarded January?), so around 6 months left to run in my estimation.
Does not bode well for the further reservations announced last month. What is the point? Oh of course, it is a cheap way of generating some "news" without actually doing anything.
Last ACTUAL work, TWO YEARS AGO TODAY
21st June 2018 RNS - Update on Finnish Diamond Prospects
? Drilling to Commence Up-ice of Green Diamond Discovery
? Micro Diamond Analysis Underway on Lahtojoki Drill Core
? Drilling at Riihivaara to Follow-up Discovery of Kimberlite Body
TBF it has now been 2 years since any practical work on the ground in Finland has been announced - the "failed" (in the sense that no samples used for testing for diamonds were recovered, and the dyke was not extended in either strike or depth) drilling at Riihivaara and the Orangeite [sic] discovery in Area 5, the news from which was then strung out for another 6 months. Everything else seems to have been about licence acquisitions, but no actual work. IIRC a reservation lasts for a maximum of 2 years, so clock's running here.
Glen... It saddens me that the old goats haven't finally bitten the bullet, acknowledge that they have taken it as far as they ever can, and accept that any JV is going to be on the buyer's terms which they will have to accept. TBF all would be better off. Let's assume at best it ends up 80:20.
As long as the share price post-JV jumps from ~8p to ~40p i.e. market cap. from £2M to £10M, no one would be the worse off, and at least there would be upside with a retained shareholding for the long(er) term shareholders who have seen catastrophic wealth erosion under current management.
Better to have 20% of a large pie than 100% of an inedible one. Even a discounted paper deal, e.g. $20 of NewBarPort paper for £100 CGNR.
An outright sale or privatization a lá Dalradian with no participation for the PI in any future upside would only benefit the management and recent investors, but maybe that was the plan all along?
Until then, this is going to remain little more than a pyramid scheme, with short term traders vying with each other in a win-lose game of riding minor surges and ebbs generated on the back of management doing regular but operationally pointless placements in order to fund their salaries and fees.
JMHO
There is nothing to get "my" hands on..... lmao.
the present incumbents have neither intent nor ability, and the project will never merit the interest of a major, for reasons clearly explained, and is only viable as an independent small producer, so it will never happen.
The only think to be done until management (inevitably) changes is to warn off naive small investors from the loss they will surely face.
Fortunately Conroy has changed his tactic and is now tapping up fellow octogenarian HNWs for quarter of a million here and there (Anderson, Bjornberg etc.) who can well afford to loose the cash and who few tears will or should be shed over.
The top ten diamond mines in the world host between 175Mct and 60Mct
https://www.mining-technology.com/features/feature-the-worlds-top-10-biggest-diamond-mines/
The median economic kimberlite size in the world is 26Mt (Bliss, J.D. 1992)
Lahtojoki is 5Mt and maybe 2Mct.
Get real stevehoops
@bbr, or is it bbs? What is the point of your posts? Is it "success" by association?
QUOTE: "an average grade of 49.6 g/t."
Dalradian's Cavancaw average grade is around 15g/t and Clontibret is a whopping 2.5g/t - check the Tetratech resource statement - so what exactly is the point of the comparison?
"Probably open pit as underground costs too much in the developed west."
It is not about the jurisdiction, but yes, DEFINITELY open pit!!! At 2.5g/t the grade is a sixth of Dalradian's. That means the value per tonne is around 85% lower but (high) underground mining costs per tonne remain fixed.
It also means six times the tonnage needs moving for the same gold, plus open pit mining is less selective and generates more waste (rock which requires moving to access the ore) than underground, typically 2-3 tonnes of waste per tonne of ore, so not only is it open pit, but at ~15-18 times the tonnage for the same gold it is MUCH MUCH larger.
Also RoI planning is an entirely different beast to the the UK.
8p soon? Wow!!! So a long way off the 18p of three weeks ago, and even further off the 40p of three years ago then.
@blue eyes
The sad fact is that whilst this recent decline is probably just a result of general downgrading in the light of CV19 jitters, unlike other stocks, there will be little likelihood of a subsequent recovery if the underlying fundamentals are not addressed.
The only times this stock seems to "surge" is due to friends and family trading and pumping ahead of an imminent placing, and NOT on the basis of significant progress, as there hasn't been any real progress in years (not since the initial Lahtojoki acquisition and scoping study IMO).
I don't include applying for postage stamp licences, finding aberrant one-off green diamonds or a random narrow dyke after ten years of searching, or the fact that it is nominally a "bit different" (orangite) as "significant" btw.
Time to stock up on the cheap in anticipation of a Victor Meldrew moment with the "senior" management? Not unless you have faith that the younger generation of Conroys won't simply inherit, and continue to run with daddy's scam.
The email to MJ says: "if this is just the re-hashing of old news then what has Karelian been doing for the past six months"
The problem here is NOT if this is just a re-hashing of old news, the problem is that the news, whether new or old, is just plain BS!
YOU CANNOT evaluate the potential of a diamond deposit by looking at some 15 year old photos of a few diamonds, which some unknown person took, especially when you have no proof or confirmation that they even came from the deposit, or are representative of it if indeed they did, and you CANNOT then release your "opinions" as an RNS or half year report.
There are REPORTING STANDARDS AND REGULATIONS and I note that NONE of this is signed off by a competent person.
Kevin McNulty has not signed off on a comoany technical RNS since 2018, and Howard Bird is presumably not stupid enough to do so, seeing as he has a reputation as a Canadian P.Geo and TSE board positions to protect.
SirG, so it is clear to all then that:
1) Either the Company has undertaken some sampling and recovered but not reported new pink diamonds, or...
2) They have acquired but not reported some of the old EPD diamonds, or...
3) They have made a false and misleading statement?
No other choices
Much confusion and uncertainty remains regarding what exactly is happening at Lahtojoki, especially now with articles on *************.com weighing in, so lets put some cards on the table.
The only diamonds ever reported as being recovered from Lahtojoki were around 70 carats by AIM-listed European Diamonds (EPD) fifteen years ago. That company is long since defunct and its records lost to the mists of time.
The only remaining evidence of these diamonds is a cropped photo taken at the time which appeared in EPD reports, and has been reproduced in a GTK prospectus, from where Karelian presumably obtained it.
The photo shows around 30 diamonds, all under 1mm in size including three pink diamonds (around 10%). These diamonds collectively would weigh around one carat. Where these diamonds, and the other 69 odd carats recovered are now, nobody knows.
It is clear that the diamonds in the photo must be a small sub-set of the total, and nobody knows if they were representative, but it seems likely that they were not, and were selected for their good clarity, shape and colour.
In the last four years, Karelian has never announced the processing of ANY material to recover its own diamonds, nor that it has uncovered or obtained any of the past diamonds, but in yesterday's half yearly report Richard Conroy in his Chairman's Statement wrote the following:
"Examination of the pink diamonds made available for inspection by the Company, together with photographs of diamonds from the deposit, indicates that these diamonds are of high quality."
This is the complete, unedited and unambiguous stand-alone sentence as originally written!
This CAN ONLY BE UNDERSTOOD as meaning the Company now has pink diamonds from Lahtojoki in its possession. Where did they get them from, why did they not report them, and what evidence or proof of their existence, their size, weight, quality, representivity and provenance etc. can the company provide?
Stock exchange rules are very clear in this regard, to prevent scandal and frauds where companies invent or falsify results. Sampling and analysis needs to be conducted under controlled conditions, by competent persons and signed of by independent accredited authorities. Otherwise what is to prevent a company merely "planting" a few diamonds or gold nuggets in a sample and claiming a "discovery" - a Wild West fraud known as "salting a mine".
The Company and its NOMAD owe the investing public some answers: namely where did, and again I quote:
" ...the pink diamonds made available for inspection by the Company"
come from and where are they now?
Highlights, 1st bullet point:"Presence of coloured stones including pink diamonds CONFIRMED at the Lahtojoki diamond deposit. EXAMINATION of the pink diamonds indicates that these diamonds are of high quality and therefore potentially especially valuable."HAS THE COMPANY RECOVERED ANY PINK DIAMONDS? A bit difficult to CONFIRM their presence if they have not.HAS THE COMPANY EXAMINED ANY OF THESE DIAMONDS? In which case where are they, how many are there, where did they get them from and when?
I would be extremely cautious of such claims. AFAIK the highest content of pink diamonds EVER recorded worldwide is less than half of one percent (0.5%) of total carat weight from Argyle, based on statistics from literally millions of carats and billions of individual diamonds mined over decades, whereas Lahtojoki has only ever had a few tens of carats extracted in the past, all by other workers.
Such statements, especially where unsubstantiated and unsupported by any data or independent professional reports should be considered highly misleading, whether this is the intent or not, and should not be allowed to pass the first hurdle of NOMAD review.
To the best knowledge available from reports released by the company or information released into the public domain by others, the only diamonds EVER recovered from Lahtojoki, excluding micro-diamonds, are in the 1990's by Ashton (~7cpht from ~20t or ~2 carats) and in the 2000's by European Diamonds (~15cpht from a ~500t sample or ~70 carats). It seems safe to say that less than 100 carats in total have EVER been recovered from Lahtojoki and none are currently available for inspection or 3rd party review. The company itself appears to have only ever recovered 61 microdiamonds of <<1 carat total weight that it has reported on.
The Brandon Hill Report (Rose, 2019) includes a cropped picture showing 29 well-shaped gem-quality diamonds, all of similar size, all smaller than 1mm, which includes three pink diamonds (~10%). This is ostensibly a photo taken of diamonds recovered by EPD in 2005-6. There is no understanding as to whether this represents the true nature of all diamonds recovered, but it must be assumed that this is not the case, i.e. the picture is selective, excluding other sizes, colours and quality (diamonds are never all the same size, and include larger, smaller, worse and better shape and quality and colour, gem and non-gem etc.).
The fate at these diamonds is unknown, but the company has never stated whether it has them, has access to them, or has observed, viewed or had them evaluated in the past.
Caution is urged in the light of such glib and misleading statements as:
"presence of pink diamonds confirmed" and
"reports suggest that these coloured stones could amount to as much as seven percent ..." and
" pink diamonds, accounting for less than five per cent of... Argyll [sic]"
(it appears that Richard Conroy cannot even spell Argyle but maybe that is part of the deception, as the ARGYLL mine contains NO diamonds, it does not even exist!)
Note the clever but misleading wording "could amount" and "less than".
Pink diamonds COULD AMOUNT to 1%, 10% or even 100% (the maximum number possible) but it is extrenely unlikely and wholly unsubstantiated the higher the number gets.
The Argyle pink diamonds are LESS THAN 5%, they are also less than 100%, in fact they are just half a percent!
I would advise shareholders to hold the NOMAD to their company to account in this regard, and pose the following questions:
1) what Lahtojoki diamonds has the company (ever) recovered, if any?
2) on what diamonds are these statistics and reporting based, where are they, when were they recovered and by whom, is their provenance (chain of custody) ascertained and are they available for independent inspection?
3) who undertook these studies and reporting, are they independently accredited to make such studies and reports and are their results available for scrutiny?
4) did the NOMAD verify the content of this release and hold the managenent and competent persons to account in this regard?
In the absence of any adequate response, shareholders should IMHO assume the worst: that the company has taken an unverified and uncredited photograph of diamonds which may or may not come from Lahtojoki and may or may not represent the true nature, size, shape, quality and colour of all and any diamonds recovered, and said, totally out of context "that looks to be about 7%, let's get a bit of encouraging news out ahead of PDAC".
Caveat emptor, DYOR.