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And again today 27/2/20 Skier
"we are in talks with a number of potential partners," Conroy said.
Conroy shares were trading 6.1% lower in London at 11.50 pence each on Thursday.
https://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/AN_1582814181020740400/conroy-gold-continues-progress-at-orlock-bridge-fault-in-ireland-.aspx
You have, three years ago...
Heigh-ho, Heigh-hooooooo
We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig in our mine the whole day through
To dig dig dig dig dig dig dig is what we really like to do
It ain't no trick to get rich quick
If you dig dig dig with a shovel or a pick
In a mine! In a mine! In a mine! In a mine!
Where a million diamonds shine!
Try https://www.gtk.fi/en/mining-maps/
TBF Finland has other priorities than diamonds, and GTK seem to be increasingly focussing on strategic and "battery" minerals. Lahtojoki is the only project listed, and after 20+ years without success things have probably moved on from the possibility of a "world class" diamond discovery in everyone's mind except RC's.
I imagine "fatigue" has set in, so although small, Lahtojoki is all there is for the moment, so in BoJo's words, just GET IT DONE.
The chance was there in 2019 but sadly not taken, so come on Messrs Anderson and Bjornberg, for everybody's sake put you money where your mouths are and pony up the £2-3M to get this started. Nobody else trusts management like you seem to.
Lets take a look at timelines, excluding regulatory announcements and corporate business, just the actual work on the ground, the company's supposed day-to-day business (and excluding announcements of "intent" to do things, only the actual "doing" and results). It has been a busy two years given that this has been the entire newsflow in 835 days, but hey..."It has taken a long time, but major exploration does tend to take a long time." Conroy said. Well, it has now been 505 days since the company completed ANY work in Finland (24/9/18) apart from applying for a few extra licences.
Today
33 DAYS ELAPSED
9/1/20 Lahtojoki Permit granted, AGAIN (same event as January 2018)
287 DAYS ELAPSED
28/3/19 Salla Reservation (also granted 13/2 but announcement delayed -to spread news?)
43 DAYS ELAPSED
13/2/19 Liperi (& Salla) Reservations granted
69 DAYS ELAPSED
6/12/18 Drill Results (again - repeat from 24/9)
31 DAYS ELAPSED
5/11/18 "Orangeite" discovered (again - repeat of 8/10)
18 DAYS ELAPSED
18/10/18 "Orangeite" discovered" (from 24/9 drill results)
24 DAYS ELAPSED
24/9/18 Kuhmo drilling complete (last actual work on the ground in Finland)
42 DAYS ELAPSED
13/8/18 Lahtojoki micro-diamonds (only work on the project in four years)
150 DAYS ELAPSED
22/1/18 Lahtojoki Exploration Permit "granted"
85 DAYS ELAPSED SINCE LAST NEWS
Argyle is a Lamoroite, hence the uniqueness. In addition to the (@<1% actually quite rare) pinks, it is dominated by brown ("cognac") and urine-coloured ("champagne") diamonds and the average value was an incredibly low $7/ct albeit at a massive 400cpht on a huge resource. That still makes (made) for $30/t with enormous economies of scale. Ellendale is also a (series) of Lamproite pipes.
There are two types of Lamproite, Leucite and Olivine-bearing, and they tend to have been emplaced at high temperatures, with poor diamond preservation, so it is only the rapidly cooled, volcaniclastic olivine lamproites that are of real interest. Apart from the Arkansas Crater of Diamibds (a single large, 40ha low grade 2cpht tourist attraction where you can actually go dig for diamonds, and has produced stones up to 40ct) AFAIK the only other diamondiferous (and largely untested) lamproite field is in Zambia, a series of 12+ pipes bang in the middle of the remote Luangwa national park!
The alluvials at Ellendale are 4-10cphm3. At $400/ct it works out between $30-80/t but requires earthmoving on a massive scale - Orange River territory. I would take the exploration target objectives of 230-410cphm3 with a large pinch of salt given comparisons to actual sample results 40x lower, and as they are based in part on estimates of what is supposedly missing. The incidence of large stones supports this, as it is the smallest diamonds that are winnowed out, albeit that this results in a bigger grade loss than loss of value.
One can only surmise their "staff numbers" is the owner management team and all others are contractors and not counted. Kimberly were reputed to be top heavy in this regards. Check out what happened to Rockwell under similar conditions. Those are pretty good terms, better than Lahtojoki, BUT as with Bow River, the alluvials off Argyle, the life may be rather limited. That said, on the face of it it looks decent enough. Bow River worked out very well but remember Argyle was a much bigger, more deeply incised and higher grade source than Ellendale 9.
https://www.mindat.org/loc-248649.html
That said, everything else said regarding KDR still applies.
Stevehoops said: "You're looking at an operation that only involves about 5-10 people to get up and running, not the hundreds that Kimberley Diamonds had [but] that doesn't mean it can't be very profitable."
Not sure who you are quoting but I assume it is Dicky Conroy, so let me enlighten you.
1) Mines need to be run 24/7 to make full use of their capital and to extract revenue at the fastest rate possible. Plant and fleet should never allowed to sit idle for 12 hours a day (the same principal as applies in the airline industry).
2) The mandatory working week in Finland is 37.5 hours so including leave and sickness you need 5 employees to cover every position.
3) Assuming a small 100 tonne per hour operation you need a minimum three staff on the plant, plus at least two security (it is diamonds after all) plus for mining, given this size of mine uses small 40t trucks, you need at least (@ 300 t/hr ore plus waste with 20 minute cycles) four trucks, plus three excavators (one on ore and two on waste and/or stand-by), plus loaders, dozers, drill and blast crew, metallurgist, geologist, maintenance and engineering staff, stores, workshops etc. comes to a shift complement of AT LEAST 20 so a workforce of AT LEAST 100.
4) This is all once the mine is actually built, after of course a resource is defined, after of course 2,000 carats are recovered, after of course 5,000 t is mined and processed, after of course the environmental permits are issued, the plant and equipment is purchased, the lake is drained and cleared of mud, the site is leveled, the plant erected and commissioned, the land owners placated and paid off, the access road unblocked, £2-3M is raised from investors, the DFS is completed, the permits and planning are issued, £20M+ in capital is raised from institutions and the two to three plus years to do it all have elapsed.
With this management? I don't think so.
OK, nothing new since 2015 then...
Get it in perspective Robemy, why don't you? Lahtojoki, like many kimberlites, contains many 10's of thousands of little fragments of eclogite, typically the size of a walnut, grading up to 90,000 cpht.
They probably represent less than 0.001% of the total or around 20 tonnes, given that the AVERAGE grade is 40cpht for 2Mct and 20t of eclogite at ~90,000cpht would contain 1.8Mct or 90% of the total grade.
Anyhow that is the point of spending £2M+ on defining a resource, something KDR has singularly failed to do in four years.
In perspective, Rio's past and producing assets:
Argyle mine: 680 cpht (750Mct produced over life.
Diavik Mine: 420 cpht (~140Mct @ 7Mct/yr over ~20 year life.
Rio's current main JV.
Fort la Corne: 12 cpht (67 Mct in over 500Mt)
Karelian's single viable project:
Lahtojoki: 40cpht (~2Mct contained)
Typical KDR RNS. Distorting and misrepresenting the facts to sucker the ignorant.
RNS: "The nature of the boulder material (an altered hypabyssal kimberlite, announced 12 January 2017) shows that it is not derived from the Lahtojoki kimberlite (a diatreme filled with tuffisitic or tuffisitic breccia kimberlite)"
1) virtually all kimberlite diatremes (volcanic vents containing broken up kimberlite and other rocks) are associated with dykes, thin sheet-like bodies which feed the pipes.
2) dyke kimberlite is always distinctive from diatreme kimberlite in that it is "hypabyssal" (ie deep solidified magma), not tuffisitic (solidified air-borne volcanic ash) or brecciated (physically broken up) so there is nothing new or surprising about finding this type of kimberlite nearby, in fact it points to it NOT being from a large pipe but rather from a small dyke.
3) dykes rarely host large tonnage, typically under 1Mt (a 1km long x 1m wide dyke holds ~1Mt to 400m depth) and need to be very high grade to be economically mined, compared to 5-6Mt already at Lahtojoki.
4) KDR in fact found a new dyke in Riihivaara in June 2015 after nearly 10 years of searching, but after a further 5 years have still not tested it to see it it actually contains any diamonds, so I won't hold my breath on any exploration around Lahtojoki turning up anything new this decade!
DYOR
Nail on head, it is pocket change and barely coveres the directors fees and salaries for another year. What is needed, committed in advance and in full is 10x as much i.e. €2-3M!
The problem with this and a ~£1M company, is it means the managenent get diluted to <10% but clearly still want absolute control, and it is also clear that management cannot or will not pay up out of their own pockets (they have had four years after all).
So the only solution is for shareholders or a new investor such as Bjornberg to loan the company £2-3M interest free and unsecured for two or three years, convertible to stock at say 20-25p in three years time.
Good luck with that. The current incumbents were offered a way out by rebel shareholders, i.e. to stand down, and continue to own 20%+ of the company but let others with more credibility raise the funds and with more competence execute the work program. They refused (twice!).
It was never about funding and progress, it was about control and maintaining the status quo.
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation...
Couldn't agree more, but honestly, imo it will happen when the current management retires and the Conroy family holding drops to around 10%. Been tried twice this year without success. It may be a long tick tock... the kimberlite has been there for the last 1,200,000,000 years so isn't going anywhere.
Much has been made recently of new, hard-hitting investors, the potential of the Rio deal to save Karelian, and the merits of the Lahtojoki project, so for the less technically/financially savvy investor, let's address a few points:
Despite recent postings about world-class deposits, eclogites, garnets etc. etc., we forget Lahtojoki was discovered 30 (yes THIRTY) years ago, and is known to be diamondiferous since 1990, so technical buzzwords are largely irrelevant. In fact it was Rio owned it until 2002, when it was sold to Eva Thoren, who re-sold it to Karelian in 2016, after it had been passed through several more experienced and better funded hands (European Diamonds, Mantle Diamonds, Firestone Diamonds) than Karelian's. Lahtojoki is small by world standards (2Ha) but the largest pipe in the Kuopio area, and Ashton and many others (Sunrise, BHP, DeBeers, Chuck Fipke's DiaMet and especially Rio) have thoroughly explored the area and not added to the 20 or so pipes (all smaller and lower-grade) discovered between 1986-1998. IF (and it is a BIG IF given funds and ability) Karelian indeed discovers further pipe(s) in the vicinity, they are still likely to be of similar size (small) and grade (low) to all the others.
Rio OWNED Lahtojoki for 13 years, and abandoned the area in 2002. They had ample opportunity to explore, evaluate or develop (compared to Karelian). The Karelian-Rio agreement has been in place for 10 (TEN) years but has not born a single fruit in that time. It doesn't apply to Lahtojoki anyhow (only to new discoveries) and Rio, given past opportunities not taken, is highly unlikey to be interested in Lahtojoki. Their agreement is a back-in deal, fairly standard in the industry, which costs Rio nothing and places all the risk with Karelian. Put bluntly, Karelian explores at its own cost and risk, and if anything significant is found (and it is Rio that gets to decide this!) they get to earn-in by refunding the costs to date, i.e. it is like a zero hours contract where Karelian only gets paid for its work if Rio likes what it produces. What typically happens then is the Major partner has the ability to take over, call the shots, and quickly dilute the junior partner out of the deal, which, if sufficiently attractive, is peanuts to the Major.
Karelian has now attracted yet another virgin investor, for the princely sum of £240,000, which should cover the principals £200,000 salary for 2020 and still leave enough for a few business-class flights to Toronto too. Frederik Bjornberg is touted as a new saviour, but his mining involvement ceased in 1984, and at vintage 1938, maybe another octogenarian calling the shots is the last thing Karelian needs? Regardless, there are standards and practices (including fiduciary, regulatory and technically) in the resource industry which a public company, regardless of its HNW shareholders, cannot just ignore.
NOBODY will (or CAN) finance what has been established as at least a £25M mine investment unless the RESOURCE and DFS boxes are comprehensively ticked. Institutions are prohibited from doing so and HNW's are just not that DUMB! It is the same as trying to get a mortgage on a house without planning permission or an engineers report. No matter how nice the house, it can't be done! It is also well established that it is going to cost at least £2-3M and take two years to tick those boxes.
It is seriously doubtful that a company worth under £1M and run by a family hanging on to control in a death grip can EVER raise this investment, or that any sugar daddy like Conroy's pal Anderson, the Bjornberg's, Canadian investors in Howard Bird's little book or even Rio will write a £2M+ cheque, no strings attached, to be repaid if/after things all work out.
Seriously, DYOR!
So let's sum up the year to date.
KDR
S/P from 4.5 to 1.7p
M/Cap from £1,500,000 to £650,000
Value destroyed: £850,000
Salary taken by RC & MJ: £170,000
CGNR
S/P from 11.5 to 4.5p
M/Cap from £2,750,000 to £1,000,000
Value destroyed: £1,750,000
New debt: £350,000
Salary taken by RC & MJ: £300,000
Bottom Line
Rewarded £470,000 for destroying £2,950,000
1.875p for £750k market cap. Strung out in heaven's high, hitting an all-time low!
So €563k total expenditure of which €315k in salaries of which €195k to the board of which €160k went to Richard and Maureen.
No lessons learned obviousl.
Meanwhile over at CGNR total expenditure was €950k of which salaries were €525k of which Richard and Maureen took €347k.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING NEW FOR 2019!!!
Micro-diamond results from, previously untested, larger Eastern Lobe of Lahtojoki diamond deposit give increased confidence for economics of potential mine.
1st reported AUGUST 2018
Extensive progress made in relation to regulatory matters required for mining permitting at Lahtojoki
DETAILS? WHAT EXACTLY?
Review of technical data suggests presence of pink diamonds in Lahtojoki deposit which if confirmed could have a significant impact on the economic evaluation
1st reported in PEA 2017
Drilling on Anomaly 5 (area where green diamond discovered by Company) intersected Orangeite (Group II Kimberlite) a potentially diamondiferous rock
1st reported SEPTEMBER 2018
Drilling at Riihivaara, where previous trenching discovered a new kimberlite also intersected Orangeite and thin section studies revealed a G10 garnet suggesting that the kimberlite may be diamondiferous.
SEPTEMBER 2018
Now that the dust has settled, lets take stock. It should be clear by now that:
A) Richard Conroy is not going to relinquish control to anyone who won't allow him to continue his absolute control of the ("his") company, and...
B) The company needs at least £2M to make any kind of progress on Lahtojoki (and £20M thereafter to deliver any meaningful returns), assuming (as is likely) that the biennial (after all, nothing announced in the last 12 months) Finnish Forest Easter Egg Hunt for garnets is never going to deliver a significant discovery that's followed up on.
Assuming they can raise £2M at an (IMO) very generous average of 4p, then they are going to have to issue at least 50M shares, or 100%+ dilution for current shareholders. More importantly, to maintain their current 27% the BoD are going to have to stump up over half a million quid, and Martello a further £200k OF THEIR OWN MONEY. That is cold hard cash, NOT conversion of deferred salaries and fees. If that were the case they still have to "invent" £700k in equity to maintain their control, and some mug still has to put the full £2M cash in.
Regardless, the new investor would own 60%+ of the company, and not want control? Yeah, sure...
If you just can't see it happening, then get ready for the £250k "working capital" placement, at 1.5p (another 18M shares), oh, and the conversion of another £80k of accumulated "debt" from deferred salaries and fees, which will be dressed up as "management participation". Funny, that is just about the figure (€86,000) that RC announced he is holding at the ready for conversion (RNS of 3/10) for another 5M shares.
Bottom line: 63M shares (40+18+5) for another 50+% dilution and nothing to show for it afterwards. Death by a thousand cuts. You read it here first.
DYOR