Vancouver – A strong rough diamond market coupled with recovery of high quality stones has delivered Diamond Fields International (DFI-T) an average price of US$200 per carat for its latest Namibian marine parcel of almost 8,000 carats.
The 50:50 joint venture with Samicor Mining Services, part of the Leviev group, recommenced marine mining of diamonds, off of the coast of Namibia, near Luderitz, in June of this year.
The companies are utilizing a recently optimized ship, the 104-metre MV Kovambo, furbished with an integrated mining system that includes a seabed crawler tool as well as an onboard processing and sorting plant.
This latest parcel of 7,968 carats is Diamond Fields’ 50% share of the recovery. The average price of US$199.86 continues to demonstrate a substantial increase over the US$143 per carat average in 2003. Diamond Fields realized a gross amount of almost US$1.6 million for its portion of the haul.
Division of the recovered diamonds between joint venture partners has seen an interesting structure arranged. Within a parcel, all stones 1.8 carats and less are equally divided between the partners. Diamonds between 1.8 carats and 9.99 carats (with the exception of certain high-value specialty stones) are alternatively distributed by shipment between the companies, with those in this latest parcel going to Samicor.
Two larger, high value stones were also recovered in this batch. A 12.8-carat diamond sold for over US$1,800 per carat, for a total of almost US$23,400, and a 5.18-carat stone sold for almost US$13,000, over US$2,500 per carat.
Since the joint venture began mining diamonds with its new ship in June, the average per carat price of the stones has exceeded the 2003 average price by over 50%.
Diamond Fields reports 67.9 million shares outstanding and the issue has been recently trading in the 65-70 per share range.
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