De Beers in Canada

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Metalex Ventures Ltd. - Exploration update

KELOWNA, BC, June 24 /CNW/ - Metalex Ventures Ltd (MTX - TSX Venture
Exchange) ("Metalex" or the "Company").

Kyle Project, Northern Ontario, Canada

The Company is pleased to report that the first of seven planned minibulk
sample drill holes into the diamondiferous T1 kimberlite is currently at a
depth of 198 metres. Kimberlite T1 was discovered by a small diameter drill
hole 39 metres SSE of the current drill hole (see Press Release dated June 17,
2005). The 48 kg of kimberlite collected from this hole returned 35 diamonds.
The current vertical drill hole intersected green kimberlite from 139 to
175 metres, when it passed into a dark green serpentinized kimberlite. The
drill is still in this dark green serpentinized kimberlite at 198 metres.
Approximately 330 kg of kimberlite core has been collected from this hole and
will shortly be shipped to CF Mineral Research Ltd. for diamond recovery.
Drilling of this current hole will continue until refusal.
These seven holes are designed to collect a representative minibulk
sample to determine the size distribution of small diamonds within the pipe;
the different phases of kimberlite present and their broad near surface
geometry. Drilling is scheduled to continue until the seven holes are
complete. Additional holes may be drilled if warranted by the diamond results.

Greenland

It was reported in March that the Company has discovered two gravel
sample sites, located 430 metres apart, that contain exceptional quantities of
G10 pyrope garnets with compositions similar to those found in commercial
diamond deposits. (see press release dated March 14). The two samples consist
of fluvoglacial sediments and are located on the southern shore of a lake,
5km long by up to 1 km wide. As many of the G10 garnets exhibit soft, friable
kelyphite reaction rims, and have angular textures, they are presumed to be
derived from a nearby source either within or adjacent to the lake.
To investigate the source of these exceptional indicator minerals a field
program of basal till drilling, ground geophysics and heavy mineral sampling
was carried out during March to May, 2005.
Sixteen shallow holes were drilled in a traverse across the lake to
collect samples of basal till with the objective of determining whether the
source of the indicator minerals lies within the lake. These samples are
currently being processed at the CF Mineral Research Ltd laboratory. Each hole
was drilled a short distance (typically less than ten meters) into bedrock.
Thin sills and dykes of a rock, provisionally identified in the field as
kimberlite, was intersected in four holes. No pyrope garnets were seen
visually in these rocks by the on site geologist and he concluded that it is
most unlikely they are the source of the exceptional indicators found on the
lakeshore. These "kimberlite" intersections are currently being analyzed at
the CF Mineral Research laboratory to determine their indicator mineral
content.
Ground gravity, magnetic and electromagnetic geophysical surveys were
completed over much of the lake and part of the shoreline. These data are
currently being interpreted by geophysicist Scott Hogg with the objective of
identifying drill targets.
In addition to the above work, seventeen follow up gravel samples have
been collected from fluvoglacial sediments on the lake shore and "up ice" from
the positive samples. These are currently being analyzed for diamond indicator
minerals.
An aerial photograph based geomorphological study has commenced to assist
in determining the provenance area of the exceptional indicator minerals.
The Company has retained access to a core drill in Greenland so that
drill testing geophysical and heavy mineral anomalies found on land can be
carried out in the near future whilst those beneath the lake can be tested
during the coming winter.

Metalex's exploration projects are managed by Kel-Ex Development Ltd., a
company owned by Dr. Charles Fipke, the Chairman of Metalex. Dr. Peter
Gregory, the President of Metalex is also an employee of Kel-Ex. The
arrangement with Kel-Ex provides Metalex with access to the advanced
proprietary databases and interpretational techniques of Dr. Charles Fipke, an
internationally recognized diamond geologist. In return, Kel-Ex receives a 10%
administration fee and, in the case of the Canadian projects, a 10% interest
in the project carried to production. (Kel-Ex will repay its proportionate
share of the costs of mine development out of its share of mine profits).
Dr. Fipke also owns the CF Mineral Research laboratory where samples collected
in the exploration programs are analyzed. Dr. Peter Gregory, a Qualified
Person, has verified that the work carried out by Kel-Ex, manager and operator
of the Company's projects, is being carried out in a professional and diligent
manner and that the appropriate quality controls are in place. Dr. Gregory has
also inspected the CF Mineral Research laboratory and is satisfied that the
work performed there meets or exceeds international best practices; that the
work is performed on an arms length basis and in accordance with standard
commercial arms length terms; and that the results provided by CF Mineral
Research are accurate and reliable. On this basis the Company has not sought
any independent analyses. However, should significant diamond grades be
discovered the Company may seek independent verification of such results.
Dr. Gregory has prepared this press release.

Peter Gregory
President

The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy
or accuracy of this release.

%SEDAR: 00008159E



For further information: METALEX VENTURES LTD, 2600 B Enterprise Way,
Kelowna, B.C. V1X 7Y5, Tel [phone], Fax [phone]



METALEX VENTURE

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What direction for the Russian diamond rush?
By: John Helmer
Posted: '22-JUN-05 07:00' GMT © Mineweb 1997-2004




MOSCOW (Mineweb.com) --
As global demand for diamonds looks set to outstrip the available supply over the next five years, a worldwide shortfall in rough has been projected recently to reach $7 billion in value by the year 2012. According to UK analyst James Picton, that is roughly two-thirds of last year's global mine output, or the equivalent of two De Beers-sized operations. Over this interval, Picton also projects 30% price growth for rough to bring demand into line with supply.



The incentives for new diamond-mining ventures to fill the gap are obvious. They are already spawning shoals of junior diamond miners now pegging prospects in southern Africa, Canada, and Australia. But in Russia, with one of the largest belts in the world of identified, but still unexplored kimberlite anomalies and occurrences in the world, stretching across northwestern Russia from Perm, in the Ural mountains, to the Finland border, the Russian mining sector is something of an anomaly.



With more than 200 kimberlites estimated for northwestern Russia, there ought to be all the signs of a diamond rush into the region. Even if just 1% of these kimberlites prove to be commercially viable, this diamond belt should generate at least two to three new mines, and that is not counting the two already in the early stages of development, Lomonosov and Verkhotina, in the Archangel region.



Diamond venturers cannot boast with comparable geological confidence in other regions. Physical security, political risk, and United Nations sanctions add to the cost of diamond prospecting in Africa; while start-up costs and bureaucratic delays seriously disadvantage Canada.



On the other hand, diamond mining in Russia has been dominated by Alrosa, and the giant has been reluctant to allow foreign or domestic competition on its home turf, in the Sakha republic of eastern Siberia. Company executives dispute this. One argues that Alrosa has "actively promoted the liberalization of Russian legislation, and supports cancelling of [export] quotas that should promote growth of competition." Indeed, if new diamond ventures in Russia, including those of foreign miners, are assured that they can take to the international market what they mine, without hindrance, that would remove a major obstacle to a Russian diamond rush.



When Ray Clark, the De Beers director in charge of Russia and CEO of Archangel Diamond Corporation, spoke three years ago of his investment concerns, he advocated the removal of the export quota system, suggesting that the Russian government's traditional, military-related rationale for the system was obsolete. "I cannot understand why diamonds are classed as a strategic resource in Russia, as they have no 'strategic' value whatsoever." Regarding the removal of the export restriction, Clark said: "an investor would prefer a guaranteed freedom to optimise the financial benefit from the sale of product."



Clark also went on to refer to a provision in Russian law, which Alrosa had lobbied in order to protect itself against foreign entrants into the mining sector. Referring to Article 4.2 of the Law on Precious Metals and Gemstones, Clark said that "Russian law requires that all times one must be sure that 50% plus one vote of all the votes which can be cast at shareholders' meetings must be held by state bodies, Russian citizens, and/or Russian entities in which there is no foreign presence."



Some Russian diamond miners believe the 49% cap can be avoided; others believe the legal ambiguity of such schemes is deterring for foreign miners. According to an Alrosa executive, the company has "officially declared its readiness in the field of geological prospecting. And Alrosa-Nyurba [Alrosa's newest mine subsidiary] was specially created as an independent legal entity to attract foreign investors. However, they have not appeared." Foreign miners explain why. They say they would be unhappy ceding control of new projects to Alrosa's management.



In Archangel, Perm, and Karelia, Alrosa has also tried to deter the kind of diamond prospecting rush now under way outside Russia. Despite substantial exploration efforts in Russia by De Beers, BHP Billiton, and Rio Tinto, to date Alrosa has been reluctant to encourage joint ventures; it has done much to put obstacles in the path of internationals whom it judges to be rivals.



According to Clark, the reason De Beers pulled out of its involvement in the Lomonosov diamond-field, selling its stake to Alrosa, was that the obstacles added up to an estimated rate of return of just 12%. The obligation on the foreign miner to put up most of the money for project development, without corresponding financial control, licensing security, and the enforceability of international arbitration of disputes, was a big negative motivating De Beers at the time, Clark noted.



After Alrosa's shareholders meet for their AGM next week, the company may release a clearer picture of its long-term mining strategy. For the time being, however, it is unclear from the company's financial reports and briefings, exactly how much is being invested into prospecting for new diamond deposits in Russia. Such press statements and reports as have been released by the company are too generalized to pinpoint this aspect of Alrosa's operations. They indicate a total "exploration budget" for this year of Rb1.6 billion ($58 million).



Data on Alrosa's diamond reserves are to be released this year from state secrecy, but it is too early to judge how fast these reserves are being depleted or replenished. What appears from the semi-confidential circular, which Alrosa issued to Eurobond investors last October, is that the company's newest mines, now being completed in the Sakha region, will do little more than replace diminishing sources of output, such as the Udachny open-pit mine. Udachny has been Alrosa's largest and most valuable producer, but the open pit is scheduled to close in five years' time. Rival miners say they are skeptical that Alrosa's current debt level and lack of transparency enable it to meet the costly challenge of converting to underground mining in Sakha.



Alrosa also dodges the question of how much it is planning to spend on new diamond search in southern Africa. At a presentation to investors in June, Alrosa's chief financial strategist Dmitri Novikov pinpointed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as a new production target. Asked to explain why, he said: "because this country provides some interesting opportunities for diamond exploration and mining." Another executive claims it is "premature" to estimate the exploration budget for the DRC.



In its circular to bond investors last year, Alrosa claimed that as one of its strategic priorities "we intend to see geographic diversification by participating in additional joint ventures in key diamond mining regions in other countries." The document cites Angola as the first priority, where Alrosa is helping to expand output at the Catoca mine, and build a new one at Lour. Other diversification priorities mentioned are Sierra Leone and the DRC.



For the time being, there are no reliable data on what Alrosa is spending in Africa, or how. The state-controlled Russian bank, Vneshtorgbank, is currently setting up in Luanda to supervise Russian business cashflow in the region, and serve as banker to Alrosa there. The head of Vneshtorgbank's Africa operations is Sergei Shilov, whose past experience in London involved diamond business. Shilov refuses to discuss his new mission in Africa.


For the time being, the Alrosa management may be calculating that it could invest more, to earn bigger profits, offshore in Africa, rather than at home in Archangel, where Alrosa'ss affiliated companies IG Alrosa and Severalmaz are working together to build a new mine. The investment by Alrosa so far in Archangel amounts to $150 million, according to a company source. De Beers spent less than $30 million on its Lomonosov venture, before withdrawing.



Could Alrosa relax its grip, and allow a foreign diamond miner rush into Russia's northwest?



The recent influence of the Kremlin in directing Alrosa's management has already had an impact on high-level personnel; domestic and foreign marketing; and tax policy. Advisors to President Vladimir Putin have been vocal advocates of a Russia-first strategy for other mineral resources, including oil and gas. This could influence Alrosa to reassess its moves into Africa, as well as its reluctance to enter joint-venture partnerships with foreign miners at home.



If the Kremlin begins to apply the approach it has adopted in the oil sector to diamonds, it is bound to push for resolution of the 7-year conflict over the only major diamond pipe to have been discovered in Russia by a foreign diamond miner -- the Grib pipe, in the Verkhotina territory of Archangel. That appears to be the motive behind a recent government report that recommends a high-level review of the project.



One of the most influential Russian policymakers for natural resource mining, Vladimir Litvinenko, was behind the federal agency attack on the way in which LUKoil has violated licence terms at this deposit. Litvinenko, whose official title is Rector of the St.Petersburg State Mining Institute, is Putin's advisor on mining policy. Verkhotina was first discovered in 1996 by Archangel Diamond Corporation (ADC), a Canadian-listed mining company controlled by De Beers. It holds a 40% stake in the deposit, which De Beers's assays indicate may be worth $7 billion at current diamond prices.

LUKoil is Russia's largest oil producer and exporter. Its chief executive Vagit Alekperov has tried to seize the diamond deposit for himself and his associates through the wholly owned Arkhangelskgeoldobycha (AGD), ADC's original joint-venture partner. But LUKoil and AGD have been facing sanctions in Swedish and US courts, as ADC presses its claim. Litvinenko outranks most other Russian mining officials, including the Minister of Natural Resources, Yury Trutnev.

Sources close to Litvinenko confirm that he was behind the presidential team of inspectors, who descended on Verkhotina last year, and found serious violations of the mining licence terms. Alekperov recently denied there are any licence violationms. But a 7-page report prepared by a federal government agency, Rosprirodnadzor, and issued on May 19, reconfirmed the violations spotted earlier. Between last year's inspection report and the latest move by Rosprirodnadzor, Litvinenko met Rinat Murzin, then head of Rosprirodnadzor, and discussed the problem. Murzin's report could have recommended suspension or cancellation of the licence. Instead, the text recommends a licence review. This allows ADC and Alekperov to resolve their differences, and move the project into compliance with the licensing requirements.

A few years before ADC's lucky strike, BHP Billiton had explored in Archangel unsuccessfully, and withdrew, writing off between $5 and $10 million in costs. The company says it is still keen to find a new Russian diamond project. So far, its negotiations with Alrosa have gone nowhere.

De Beers remains committed to greenfields exploration, and has a joint venture searching in the Leningrad region, to the south of ADC's prospect. Israeli diamantaire Lev Leviev has also invested in his own mining vehicle, Uralalmaz, which is currently based in the Perm region. His Israeli rival, Beny Steimetz, who owns the mining consultancy Bateman, is also looking for Russian projects.

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MINING NEWS: Impact of diamond mining will not be forever

De Beers established a detailed closure, reclamation plan for Snap Lake mine in Canada's Northwest Territories before construction

Sarah Hurst

Mining News Editor

The right way to do mine reclamation is to start planning it before the mine opens, and long before it closes.

That's exactly what is happening at the site of De Beers' proposed Snap Lake diamond mine in Canada's Northwest Territories. The company's board recently approved the project and production is scheduled to start in 2006. Snap Lake will be De Beers' first diamond mine outside Africa and Canada's first fully underground diamond mine.

The construction cost will be an estimated C$636 million.

"I forget that sometimes, when I'm working with De Beers, that they're doing a mining project, not a revegetation project, but I also think it's good to stress that that's my focus and remind them of that," Sandra Marken, a plant ecologist with Golder Associates in Calgary, said at the Northern Latitudes Reclamation Workshop in May.

"Right now this is a plan that I'm presenting; we don't have any data, we haven't started revegetation, but there's things we can do up front that will help them down the road, in five, 10, 15, 20 and 25 years that will expedite the reclamation process," Marken said.

Switching to QuickBird satellite technology
Marken and her team used Landsat to map the vegetation, and they identified 18 vegetation cover types in the vicinity of the proposed mine. Heath-boulder and open water accounted for 85 percent of the area's vegetation.

Another 12 percent consisted of open spruce forest or tussock hammock, and various different vegetation types made up the remaining 3 percent.

Landsat did not provide a high enough resolution for the team's purposes, so this summer they will be switching over to the QuickBird satellite technology.

The focus of the reclamation will be at the north pile, a processed kimberlite and waste rock storage facility, Marken said.

The north pile, the mine buildings, the access road and the airstrip will form the footprint of the project.

The environmental impact assessment and monitoring program have so far looked at a 500-meter buffer around this footprint. The project's total area of impact is approximately 560 ha.

The north pile will be 484 meters wide, 1,200 meters long, 92 ha in area and rise 39 meters above the lowest local point, while not exceeding the height of the highest point.

Marken said that over the 22-year mine life it will be developed in three stages, and each stage, or cell, will be capped with half a meter of crushed granite, which will control erosion, but will also create some vegetation challenges.

After three years, reclamation will begin on the north pile's first cell.

"There has been some discussion with local communities as to whether they want to revegetate it at all, because of some concerns about plants growing on kimberlite, the possibility of accessing contaminants," Marken said. "In the planning of this north pile, it doesn't look like that will happen, however, we will monitor it to make sure it doesn't."

EIA's predictions tested annually
Work on the environmental impact assessment for the mine began in 1992 and it was approved in 2002.

The government's water license requirements added to the lengthy list of measures that De Beers has to implement in order to protect the environment.

The environmental impact assessment's predictions must be tested annually, to show the government and stakeholders that they are accurate, and that nothing unexpected is happening.

"We may have changes beyond the footprint that are affecting vegetation patterns, so we'll be measuring that every year, as well," Marken said. "We'll also be monitoring annually the results of reclamation and we'll also be applying adaptive management for continual improvement."

Two forms of monitoring
There will be two forms of monitoring, the annual monitoring and additional monitoring precipitated by predetermined triggers that signal potential problems - an early warning system.

If annual monitoring shows that the mine is disturbing more land than originally planned, or if the soil chemistry or water quality is different from the expected levels, that will trigger a site visit and possibly more investigation, and a more detailed monitoring program.

The other trigger program is the impact of dust, which is triggered by the annual air monitoring program.

After the environmental impact assessment was complete, a closure and reclamation plan was developed.

"It is a living document ... we'll expect changes as we go, and it'll also become more detailed as the program progresses," Marken said. "Right now a lot of our revegetation plans feel a little hypothetical."

Sharing information with other northern mines
De Beers and the reclamation specialists have committed to collaboration with other northern mines, to study changes to vegetation and soil properties if necessary, to monitor the effects of dust on vegetation, to incorporate traditional land use and knowledge in their program, and to train and work with local aboriginal communities. They will be exchanging information with BHP Billiton's Ekati diamond mine, also in the Northwest Territories.

Northwest Territories laws require De Beers to establish stable landforms, protect local water resources, re-establish productive use of the land, and facilitate the natural recovery of areas affected by mining. All of this is provided for in the closure and reclamation plan.

"Down the road, five, 10, 15, 20 years, if we want to find out if the mine is having an effect, or if we suspect it does, we'll have this pre-mine data to compare that back to, and I think we're fortunate to be able to do that," Marken said.

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Kensington Resources Ltd. Elects Zimmerman and Baldwin to Board of Directors

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(CCNMatthews - June 14, 2005) - Kensington Resources Ltd. (the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:KRT) yesterday elected William E. Zimmerman and Christopher G. Baldwin to the Board of Directors at the Company's annual general meeting. James R. Rothwell, Robert A. McCallum, Tony Pezzotti and William E. Stanley were re-elected and will continue to serve as directors.

"We are very pleased to have Bill Zimmerman and Chris Baldwin involved with Kensington Resources Ltd. as we enter a period of increased activity and growth. Both are leaders in their respective fields, and bring proven expertise in Canada's diamond industry to the Company," states Robert A. McCallum, President & CEO of Kensington Resources Ltd. "The strengthening of our Board is yet another corporate accomplishment for Kensington Resources Ltd. The Company is attracting premier leadership talents that strengthen our ability to establish an aggressive role in the co-management of the Fort a la Corne Diamond Project. Our corporate objective remains focused on the best interests of our shareholders, with a view to improving value in this Company through excellent project management and by advancing the profile of Kensington Resources Ltd."

Mr. Zimmerman previously served as director of the Company between June 1, 2001 and June 11, 2004. As the former President of BHP Diamonds Inc., he was responsible for developing new diamond opportunities and the sorting, valuation and sales of diamond produced from the Ekati Diamond Mine. Mr. Zimmerman became involved in the Ekati Diamond Project in 1994 and led the team that developed and implemented the successful strategy for selling diamonds from Canada's first diamond mine to world markets. He has over 30 years of business experience in natural resources, specializing in the development and implementation of successful marketing strategies of commodities including diamonds.

Mr. Baldwin is a corporate/commercial lawyer and partner in the Vancouver office of Lawson Lundell LLP. He has been practising for almost 30 years, and has significant experience advising mining companies on project development.

Robert McCallum told the assembled audience, "We also recognize the many contributions made by David H. Stone and Murray Tildesley during their tenure and would like to express our appreciation for their past service on our board and for their continued involvement with the Company as members of the Technical Advisory Board."

Shareholders also approved the reappointment of Deloitte and Touche LLP as auditor and the adoption of a new Stock Option Plan. An archive of President & CEO Robert A. McCallum's presentation from the meeting will be posted on the Company's website at www.kensington-resources.com.

At the board meeting following the annual general meeting, the board of directors also appointed James R. Rothwell as Chairman, Robert A. McCallum as President & CEO and Christopher G. Baldwin as Corporate Secretary.

Further, the Company reports the granting of 250,000 stock options exercisable at a price of $2.13 per share for a five-year period to employees and consultants of the Company. The stock options shall vest over a one year period and are subject to regulatory approval of the new Stock Option Plan.

Kensington Resources Ltd. is an exploration and mine development company currently focused on the high potential Fort a la Corne Diamond Project in Saskatchewan. The management team includes strong technical expertise and is committed to reaching a diamond producer status for the realization of shareholder value. The Fort a la Corne Diamond Project is a joint venture among Kensington Resources Ltd. (42.245%), De Beers Canada Inc. (42.245%), Cameco Corporation (5.51%) and UEM Inc. (carried 10%). After fifteen years of exploration at Fort a la Corne, the joint venture partners have entered into an accelerated results-driven advanced exploration and evaluation phase targeted on reaching a pre-feasibility decision in 2008. The Fort a la Corne Diamond Project includes 63 identified kimberlite bodies within the largest diamondiferous kimberlite cluster in the world.

Robert A. McCallum, President & CEO

FORM 20-F FILE #0-24980

LISTED IN STANDARD & POOR'S

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33 Carats update

MONTREAL, June 8 /CNW Telbec/ - The partnership between De Beers Canada
Inc. and DIOS EXPLORATION for over two years has enabled the 33 Carats project
to advance to the drilling stage. The 33 Carats PROJECT was funded by De Beers
since March 2003 and much value was added to the property over that period.
Following a review of the data, De Beers has informed DIOS on June 03, 2005
that it has decided to withdraw from the option agreement. This was a project
which De Beers optioned into and where DIOS were the operators. De Beers has
spent over $ 1.7 million in exploration to date. Mining claims will be renewed
and left in good standing for a year.
DIOS will continue to search for the sources of the outstanding
kimberlite indicator minerals dispersal trains located on its wholly-owned
33 Carats property, and is looking forward for further business associations
with De Beers in the future. Upon reception of the latest till results
expected in June-July, DIOS plans to carry out further prospecting, geophysics
and drilling this year.
"We are pleased with the effort and quality of the work that the DIOS
technical team invested in the 33 Carats project and we look forward to
working together again in the future," said Martin Doyle, Senior Vice
President Exploration for De Beers Canada Inc.

DIOS is a major player in diamond exploration in Quebec with several
projects being developed along the favourable Mistissini-Lemoyne Structure
that hosts several kimberlites, including the Ashton-Soquem Renards
diamondiferous cluster. DIOS recently generated two new projects with
significant results aiming at investigating the southern suggested portion of
that structure.

The TSX-V Exchange has not reviewedand does not, accept responsibility
for the adequacy or accuracy of this, release.



For further information: Marie-José Girard, Pres. & CEO, [phone],
Fax: [phone]; Dominique Doucet, Chairman, [phone],
[e-mail] ; Web Site: http://www.diosexplo.com ; Renmark
Financial Communications Inc., Charles Descary:
[e-mail] ; Sylvain Laberge:
[e-mail] ; Media: Cynthia Lane:
[e-mail] ; [phone], www.renmarkfinancial.com

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Canada's Diamond Exploration Boom Continuing Apace

By Stephen Clayson
15 May 2005 at 09:37 AM EDT


LONDON (ResourceInvestor.com) -- Presently active in Canada is an impressive array of diamond prospectors, all hoping to find the country's next big mine and further its ascendancy as a hard rock diamond producer. A goodly number of these companies have been outlining their credentials to the financial community this week at the 2005 London Diamond Conference, making now an opportune time for a roundup of their stories.

Canada itself is now firmly ensconced in the leading rank of diamond producing nations, becoming the third largest producer by value on the back of the successful development of two world class mines; BHP Billiton's Ekati mine and Rio Tinto's Diavik. Indeed, Rio is accelerating the development of the Diavik mine, and along with its 40% partner Aber Diamond (TSX: ABZ-T), sees a great deal more potential in the project, though is typically cagey regarding exact details. Despite this, Rio says that it sees diamonds and specifically those from Canada as an increasingly important part of its business. Next for the Diavik mine is the $190m construction of a new open pit focused on the A418 kimberlite.




Interestingly and aside from its involvement in the Diavik mine, Aber is seeking to make the novel switch from diamond mining into retailing, after acquiring an $85m controlling state in the US based retailer Harry Winston.

Likely to soon join Canada's diamond initial producers is Tahera Diamond (TSX: TAH-T), whose Jericho mine is under construction and pegged for first commercial output in 2006. Tahera has secured its position in the market by forming an alliance with Tiffany & Co., which has agreed to purchase or market Jericho's entire output, as well as providing a C$35m loan facility to aid mine construction. Tahera also remains an active explorer with three areas of focus in Canada, including a joint venture with diamond leviathan De Beers.

In terms of highly exploration biased Canada diamond plays, there are several options. Diamondex Resources (TSX: DSP-V) boasts a team of Russian exploration geologists who have honed their skills uncovering Siberia's diamonds, and have now been brought to bear on Canada's deposits by Diamondex. The company has the endorsement of Barrick Gold as a stakeholder of close to 20%. Diamondex's two primary exploration properties are Lena West, which will undergo drill testing of its promising detected kimberlites this year, and King, which is postulated as an extension of De Beers' Snap Lake project.

Kensington Resources (TSX: KRT-V) is another junior engaged in a joint venture with De Beers, each holding 42.245% of the Fort à la Corne project in Saskatchewan's eponymous kimberlite field along with some more minor stakeholders. Drilling of 14 choice kimberlites this year is to be focused on moving the project, whose size is estimated at 350mt grading 10-20cpht, towards pre feasibility stage by 2008. The Fort à la Corne project's advantage is its location in relatively temperate and highly developed Saskatchewan, which could bode well for the feasibility of a comparatively low cost operation.

Also active in Saskatchewan's Fort à la Corne kimberlite field is Shore Gold (TSX: SGF-T), which recently received a substantial cash injection from Newmont, leaving the gold giant with just under 10% of the company. Newmont were seemingly taken with Shore's Star project, which is undoubtedly very promising geologically and also benefits from the amenities of Saskatchewan. A full resource calculation and pre feasibility study is underway for the Star project, but a preliminary estimate is a deposit of 240mt grading 16cpht.

Stornoway Diamond's (TSX: SWY-T) strength is in its diverse portfolio of joint ventured properties. Foremost among these are the BHP Billiton partnered Aviat and Churchill properties, drill testing of both of which will take place this year. Stornoway has also recently embarked on an early stage joint venture in Botswana with Motapa Diamonds (TSX: MTP-V), which is shortly to undertake an aerial geophysical survey of the project area in order to try and define drillable targets.

Spawned and 44% owned by Agnico-Eagle Mines, Contact Diamond (TSX: CO-T) is exposed to three prospective Canadian diamond provinces. The company's primary area of focus is its Timiskaming project area straddling the border between Ontario and Quebec, where drilling on new targets is to take place this year after a previous $4m programme successfully defined two significant kimberlites.

Majority owned by Rio Tinto is Ashton Mining (TSX: ACA-T), which is also exploring in three different areas of Canada. Most advanced is the company's Renard project in Quebec, at which a resource of 20mt has been defined at an average grade of 50cpht. To remedy the deposit's small size, the company is hoping to discover additional kimberlites that would improve the project's financials.

All in all, the 2005 Canadian diamond exploration season looks to be an exciting one in prospect, and could well see strong returns for investors in the right companies. Diamond exploration spending in Canada by majors and juniors alike continues to grow, with the latter applying the fervour that is their virtue and recruiting many of the sector's best personnel. However, the involvement of sizable gold producers Newmont and Barrick and of diversified majors Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton is both indicative and important to the realisation of the potential for further growth of diamond mining in the country, whichever of the vying companies it is ultimately derived from.

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MINING NEWS: De Beers gives green light to mine
The road has been cleared for Canada's latest diamond mine, with South African gem giant De Beers giving its final go-ahead for the C$636 million Snap Lake project.

In the planning and development stages for several years, the mine is scheduled to start production in 2007, targeting about 1.5 million carats a year once it achieves peak output.

It will be De Beers' first diamond mine outside of Africa and the third in the Northwest Territories, joining Diavik and Ekati.

But Tahera Diamond will actually be the third to come on line, assuming its Jericho mine in Nunavut Territory meets a 2006 start-up date.

The board of De Beers also gave preliminary approval for the proposed Victor diamond mine, a C$982 million project in northern Ontario.

Victor still needs Canadian government approval of an environmental assessment.

De Beers annual review, made public in April, said the company is aiming to produce diamonds worth US$1 billion from its Canadian mines in 2015.

Snap Lake involved complex impact and benefit agreements with four aboriginal groups in the area plus environmental, socio-economic and secondary diamond industry agreements with the Northwest Territories government.

Northwest Territories Resources Minister Brendan Bell praised De Beers last year for "making a significant and meaningful contribution" to the territories "through training and development, business opportunities and on-going social investment."

He said the deals reaffirmed the Northwest Territories government's position that sustainable development of northern resources "is essential to the long term economic, cultural well being of all NWT residents."

--Gary Park

[Jusbrowsing]

De Beers approves Snap Lake
Cost has doubled to $635M during four years of site preparation and regulatory hurdles

David Finlayson
The Edmonton Journal

May 11, 2005

EDMONTON - The De Beers board has okayed the construction of the $635 million Snap Lake diamond mine in the Northwest Territories, and given conditional approval to spend $982 million to build the Victor mine in northern Ontario.

The Snap Lake project, 220 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, is on course for a 2007 production startup, De Beers Canada spokeswoman Linda Dorrington said Tuesday.

De Beers has been preparing the site and working through the regulatory process for more than four years. In that time the cost has more than doubled from the original $260 million estimate.

Dorrington said the board was obviously comfortable with the cost, which has risen $41 million since last November, mainly due to increased labour, steel and fuel costs.

"We're very excited to be at this point, and to be closer to De Beers' first mine in Canada." Dorrington said.

De Beers chairman N. F. Oppenheimer said in a release they were impressed with De Beers Canada team's ability to address the technical challenges at the complex Snap Lake ore body.

Snap Lake is a kimberlite dike, a horizontal formation of diamond-bearing minerals that requires underground mining.

Canada's first diamond mines at nearby Ekati and Diavik, are vertical kimberlite pipes that can be open-pit mined.

Dorrington acknowledged Snap Lake has been an engineering challenge, but De Beers' global experience -- and extensive underground testing at the site -- means they are now ready to go.

Snap Lake will produce 1.5 million carats a year for about 20 years when it hits full production in 2008.

De Beers bought the Snap Lake asset by acquiring Winspear Diamonds Inc. for $305 million and buying a 32-per-cent share owned by Aber Resources Corp. for $173 million.

The Victor mine, in the James Bay Lowlands near the coastal community of Attawapiskat, has been given a rough environmental ride by aboriginal groups in the area.

Approval by the De Beers board is conditional on getting through that part of the regulatory process, Dorrington said.

If that happens by July, the three-year construction schedule on the open-pit mine could begin early next year, she said. But if final government approval is delayed, the company will miss the critical winter road window and the project will be set back a year.

"We're working very closely with the regulators to get the comprehensive study report out, but we're getting pretty close to the wire," Dorrington said.

Victor is expected to produce 600,000 carats a year over its 12-year life.

[e-mail]

[Jusbrowsing]

De Beers approves Snap Lake mineNWT diamond project to cost $636-millionBy WENDY STUECK

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 Page B9

MINING REPORTER

VANCOUVER -- De Beers SA has given the official green light for its Canadian division to build Snap Lake, a $636-million diamond mine in the Northwest Territories.

The mine is expected to begin production in 2007 and produce about 1.5 million carats a year.

It will be the first diamond mine for De Beers outside of Africa.

Canada has two existing diamond mines, Ekati and Diavik, both in NWT. Tahera Diamond Corp. is developing the Jericho mine in Nunavut and is aiming to have that project in production by next year.

De Beers Canada Inc. said yesterday that the board of De Beers SA approved moving Snap Lake, which has been under development for several years, into full construction.

The $636-million estimate is up from a November forecast of $625-million, reflecting higher costs for labour and materials such as steel and fuel, spokeswoman Linda Dorrington said yesterday.

De Beers has spent several years negotiating impact and benefit agreements with the four aboriginal groups that will be affected by Snap Lake, Ms. Dorrington said. Ms. Dorrington said the board also gave conditional approval for the Victor project, a proposed diamond mine in Northern Ontario with an estimated price tag of $982-million.

The board's green light is conditional on the federal government signing off on the project's environmental assessment, Ms. Dorrington said.

In its annual review, released last month, De Beers said it hopes to be producing $1-billion (U.S.) worth of diamonds from its Canadian projects by 2015.

Last year, De Beers sales arm, Diamond Trading Co., sold $5.7-billion in rough diamonds.

[Jusbrowsing]

Ditem Grants Beaver Lake Options to Strateco

By Jeff Miller Posted: 5/3/2005 12:50 PM

(Rapaport...May 3, 2005) Diamond mining company Ditem Explorations Inc., of Canada, granted options to Strateco for 51 percent interest in Ditem's Matoush and Beaver Lake properties in Quebec's Otish mountains.

The two companies hold adjoining properties at Beaver Lake --a site with 168 claims at present. Ditem entered an agreement with De Beers for 100 percent earn-in option on Southampton Island in July 2004.

Ditem also has a 100 percent interest in two natural gas properties south and southwest of Montreal, Canada, called Dundee and St-Jean as well as the Matapédia North and South properties in Gaspésie.

[dimonfind]

Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. to be Listed on the American Stock Exchange
Thursday March 31, 8:30 am ET

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 31, 2005--Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (the Company) (TSX:MPV - News; OTCBB:MPVI - News) is pleased to announce that its application for listing on the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) has been approved. Trading of the Company's shares on the AMEX will start on Monday April 4. The new stock symbol will be "MDM".

This approval is contingent upon the Company being in compliance with all applicable listing standards on the date it begins trading on the AMEX, and may be rescinded if the Company is not in compliance with such standards.

Elizabeth J. Kirkwood, Chairman & CFO stated, "We are very pleased with the listing on AMEX and believe that shareholders will benefit from, among other things, improved liquidity in the stock and a higher overall profile for the Company."

Separately, De Beers is on schedule with the pre-feasibility/feasibility in-depth project study. The conclusion of the study is expected in June of 2005.

Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. is a company developing a diamond in the NWT of Canada. The AK mining leases, located in the Northwest Territories of Canada are now held 44.1% by Mountain Province Diamonds Inc., 4.9% by Camphor Ventures (TSX VENTURE:CFV - News), and 51% by De Beers Canada Exploration Inc. As reported in its news release on March 7th, 1997, Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. and its partner entered into a joint agreement with De Beers Canada Exploration Inc. formerly known as Monopros Ltd. (a wholly owned subsidiary of De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited) under which De Beers Canada Exploration Inc. has the right to earn up to a 60% interest in the AK property by taking the project to commercial production. Carl G. Verley, P. Geol., a director, is the qualified person for the Company.

Jan W. Vandersande, Ph.D., President & CEO

This release may contain forward-looking statements, within the meaning of the "safe-harbor" provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, regarding the Company's business or financial condition. Actual results could differ materially from those described in this news release as a result of numerous factors, some of which are outside of the control of the Company.

USA Office: 3633 E. Inland Empire Blvd., Suite 465, Ontario, CA 91764, [phone]

CANADA Office: 21 Nesbitt Drive, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4W 2G2

Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (TSX:MPV - News; OTC Bulletin Board:MPVI - News)

Contact:

Mountain Province Diamonds Inc.
Jan W. Vandersande, Ph.D.
President & CEO
[phone]
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]
www.mountainprovince.com

[dimonfind]

Kensington/De Beers optimistic
At a tour of the Kensington/De Beers Diamond Project in the Fort a la Corne area recently, project executives stated nothing but optimism for further exploration of diamonds in the region.

http://www.melfortjournal.com/story.php?id=121486

By Colin McGarrigle of the Journal

Melfort Journal — At a tour of the Kensington/De Beers Diamond Project in the Fort a la Corne area recently, project executives stated nothing but optimism for further exploration of diamonds in the region.
The 2004-05 evaluation and exploration program has been given a $7.62 million budget, representing the largest and most aggressive exploration program to date for the project.
"We have found diamonds and we know that there's many more," stated Richard Moleneux, president and CEO of De Beers Canada.
Current exploration has shown a significant deposit of kimberlite in the region, and tests have indicated that the grade of diamonds found range from seven to 16 carets per hundred tonnes.
"This is a new era for Kensington. If everything goes as well as we hope, this could be the largest, low-cost, long-life diamond site in the world," explained Robert McCallum, president of Kensington Resources.
"Kensington shares will definitely be a lot higher than they are today," McCallum stated with optimism.
With the large exploration budget, the goal now is to establish a Task Force to identify new goals and review the strategy for advancement at the diamond project.
Moleneux added that the demand for diamonds had slipped in previous years, but that there seems to be a resurgance in the markets recently.
"It is a hugely complicated process to sell diamonds, but the demand for diamonds is now growing ahead of supply," stated Moleneux.
"And a project like this takes on a new importance for diamonds," he added.
While the group is still in the exploration stage, McCallum stated that they are looking at ways to accelerate the project as quickly as possible.
A feasibility study will be carried out within three to four years, according to McCallum, and if the study gives the go-ahead, he stated that the project could have three to four large open-pit mines within a few years.
Even though it could be several years before any actual mining takes place, McCallum and Moleneux were stating that they would be seeking ways to maximize the local work force in any way possible.

[dimonfind]

SA world's fourth largest diamond producer

http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1722301-6078-0,00.html

South Africa maintained its position last year as the world's fourth-largest diamond producer, with an output of about 13 million carats, valued at R7.8 billion, says the SA Diamond Board.

In its 2003/04 annual report, tabled at Parliament on Thursday, the board said the industry employed 28,000 people around the country: 13,000 in mining; 9000 in jewellery retail; 3000 in jewellery manufacturing; 2100 in cutting and polishing; and 900 in sorting and valuing diamonds.

Country's producing more diamonds than South Africa were Botswana, Russia, and Canada.

The board said South Africa was "a solid diamond trading country with a complex value chain".

"However, (it) still exports rough diamonds. The challenge is to add value to our goods by creating a high-value chain.

"Our major challenge is to grow and advance South Africa's cutting, polishing and jewellery manufacturing capacity in such a manner that it positions South Africa as a globally competitive diamond-producing country."

The world's rough diamond market commanded high prices during the year under review.

"There was, on average, a 20% increase in rough diamond prices. Recently, De Beers Diamond Trading Company announced increases of about 8%. A long-term shortage of diamonds is forecast, and prices are
expected to rise," the board said.
Sapa

[dimonfind]

De Beers - Diamond Hunting with GIS
By Joe Francica
(Sep 08, 2004) Post a comment

http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=589

Introduction
De Beers, the worlds largest diamond supplier, has an eye on an enterprisewide GIS. De Beers' multifaceted business entails global operations in exploration and mining, including marine mining sales and marketing. The company has assets on six continents and employs 22,000 people. During the 1990’s, management put in place a five-year plan reflecting its need for “improving operational efficiency and effectiveness” starting in the latter part of the decade.

GIS at De Beers
De Beers has employed GIS for over twelve years where it functions primarily in their exploration division. The first installation of GIS was in their exploration group where it now has over 200 users and has expanded to De Beers Marine. Group Exploration now has over 200 users with additional users in other divisions like De Beers Marine and Mining, and Mineral Resources Management. Group Exploration is in the process of standardizing its operational systems, including prospecting, laboratories and document management system. GIS will be directly linked to the Prospecting Information System and will play an important role in the integration.

To manage the process, De Beers has enlisted the help of a local consulting company, GIMS (Pty.) Limited in South Africa, and has signed a Multi National Enterprise (MNE) agreement. As major contractor on the project, GIMS will have responsibility for the ESRI products of an enterprisewide spatial database that will employ Microsoft SQL Server. One of the main goals of the project will ensure that all ventures in De Beers Group Exploration will have the same spatial database structure, in order to facilitate information sharing and access to spatial data.

Technical Clarity
The foundation of the spatial database will use ESRI’s ArcSDE to manage spatial data dissemination. The enterprise application being designed for initial implementation is the Prospecting Information Management System which will be responsible for providing prospecting information trough and generating a Personal Geodatabase for field usage and analysis. This Geodatabase will send and receive data in a secure and automated way. In addition, it will provide some additional functionality such as Spatial Audit Trails and Access Control, according to De Beers.

De Beers intends to standardize spatial applications on ESRI technology. According to Marcelo Braghin of GIMS, “De Beers Group Exploration not only has standards in the technology, using ArcGIS, ArcSDE and ArcIMS we are also developing standards for symbology, metadata and the geodatabase schema. At the moment, we are developing specific applications to integrate the spatial data and prospecting data to the field operations. These applications will be used in all countries in which our Group Exploration is working, currently on five continents.” Mr. Braghin continued by saying that, “De Beers Group Exploration will use SQL Server; De Beers Brazil has already installed ArcSDE/SQLServer and put in production; De Beers Canada Exploration is quite close to finalizing the conversion.”

De Beers Marine also uses GIS where they are deploying ArcPAD, ArcIMS and ArcSDE to manage the production of the vessels on line.

Diamond Hunters
According to Bill McKecnnie, Global Exploration Manager, diamond prospecting takes a long-term commitment. “The company’s projects cover the full exploration 'pipeline' i.e. early stage exploration which includes desktop appraisal of potentially prospective areas and grassroots reconnaissance work to discover new kimberlites as well as advanced exploration projects to establish the economic viability of diamondiferous kimberlites. Acquisitions and joint ventures, where appropriate, complement De Beers' own exploration efforts.

[dimonfind]

Multifaceted Exploration
As demand rises, mining companies are looking beyond southern Africa and going to Russia, India and other countries to seek diamond deposits.



SOUTH AFRICA

DIAMONDS

DE BEERS CONSOLIDATED MINES LTD SOUTH AFRICA DIAMO

MINING

GLOBAL REPORT

DE BEERS CONSOLIDATED MINES LTD











By Rebecca Bream and Nicol Degli Innocenti, Financial Times


JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — For years, De Beers of South Africa dominated the world diamond market and production was concentrated in southern Africa. But now a number of companies — some big and established, others small upstarts — are seeking to produce the sparklers from other parts of the globe.

De Beers says it now controls less than half of rough diamond production, down from a market share of more than 70% 10 years ago. Although about 40% of diamonds still come from Botswana or South Africa, rising prices have stimulated gem exploration and mining in a wider range of countries from Brazil to India.

Diversified mining groups Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton broke into the market in the late 1990s with big projects in Canada, and state-owned production has been increasing in Russia and Angola.

Demand for diamond jewelry is strong in the United States, the main market, but is growing even faster among newly wealthy consumers in China and India.

But existing mine production has peaked, and producers have sold their stockpiles of gems. It has been 10 years since the last significant diamond discoveries — BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto's mines in Canada — and questions over future supply have pushed up prices.

These conditions have enticed more mining companies into the diamond market. Many are pursuing exploration projects discarded by other prospectors when the market was less attractive.

Diamond mining is relatively simple, but it is hard to find a suitable deposit. Kimberlites, deposits of volcanic rock associated with diamonds, occur all over the world, but only 1% contain diamonds and only 1% of those yield enough to be worth mining.

"There are fewer than 20 kimberlites in the world that matter," said Keith Johnson, chief executive of Rio Tinto's diamond division.

Diamond mines are expensive and time-consuming to develop, making it hard for smaller mining companies to succeed without help from a major firm, he said.

Central and West Africa hold great promise for diamond discoveries, analysts say, but past efforts to look for kimberlites have been interrupted by war and civil unrest.

Mano River has formed a joint venture with BHP Billiton to look for diamonds in Sierra Leone, whose civil war was declared over in 2002, and the group also is exploring in neighboring Liberia.

BHP Billiton, with De Beers, is also in talks with the state-owned diamond company in Congo about acquiring projects in that country.

Tony Williams, executive chairman of European Diamonds, said, "New sources of diamonds are very valuable, that is why people are prepared to take political risk in Sierra Leone" or Congo.

His company is hoping to develop a diamond mine in eastern Finland, in an area that shares the same geology as northwestern Russia, home to two large gem deposits.

"Russia is the wild card in the diamond business," said James Picton, a diamond mining analyst at brokerage firm W.H. Ireland Group, who thinks the country could have more diamond-producing potential than Canada.

Many Russian diamond deposits, such as the Grib kimberlite near Arkhangelsk in northwest Russia, have not been fully developed because of legal or financial problems.

Canada, Russia and West and Central Africa are regarded by analysts as the areas where big new diamond discoveries are most likely to be made, but geologists are also active in India and Brazil, encouraged by the two countries' past production of diamonds.

"Historically, India has been the home of some of the largest diamonds ever found," said Melissa Sturgess, chief executive of Dwyka Diamonds, which is exploring in Andra Pradesh with BHP Billiton.

India was the main source of diamonds in the world until 1725, when gems were discovered in Brazil. The South American country then became the leading diamond producer in the 19th century, but supply dwindled in the 20th century and southern Africa came to prominence.

River Diamonds and Brazilian Diamonds are two companies that hope they can revive the industry by using modern exploration technology to locate new deposits.

Despite all the exploration activity taking place elsewhere, Gary Ralfe, De Beers' chief executive, thinks that Botswana and South Africa will remain the main producers.

"The mines in Canada are rich but small and do not have a long life," he said. "Russia has the mine resources to continue to produce its current share of 20% of world production but not to increase it significantly. Looking ahead, there is nothing to disturb southern Africa's position as the greatest source of production."

[dimonfind]

De Beers Canada Options properties on Southampton Island to Ditem Explorations Inc.

http://www.cnw.ca/fr/releases/archive/August2004/26/c4486.html

TORONTO, Aug. 26 /CNW/ - De Beers Canada is pleased to announce that it
has optioned its properties on Southampton Island in Nunavut to Ditem
Explorations Inc. The Southampton properties comprise two blocks of permits,
covering 6,500 sq km, valid for three years.
Ditem signed a confidentiality agreement with De Beers in March and
completed a review of the De Beers work programs which included till sampling
and a fixed wing airborne magnetic survey. "Our objective is to move
exploration projects forward as quickly as possible. Partnerships such as this
one with Ditem are necessary for the rapid development of some of our
properties and a key component of our growth strategy in Canada," said Richard
Molyneux, President and CEO of De Beers Canada. The Southampton Island permits
were taken over as a result of a regional exploration program of the Eastern
Arctic initiated by De Beers in 2000. The Eastern Arctic is now the most
active area of diamond exploration in Canada.
In terms of the letter agreement, Ditem will spend not less than
CDN$1 million in carrying out prospecting, exploration and development for all
minerals over a period of three years to acquire a 100% interest in the
properties. At any time, De Beers may buy back part of Ditem's interest for a
pro rata amount equal to three times Ditem's costs for an interest of up to
60%.
Forty-three percent of the De Beers Group global exploration budget of
USD$92 million will be spent in Canada this year. De Beers has found over 200
kimberlites in Canada, often in conjunction with joint venture partners. The
company's current land holdings in Canada are approximately 163,000 sq km, of
which approximately 139,000 sq km are in Nunavut.
De Beers currently has several active joint ventures in Canada and
negotiations are on-going with other exploration companies. Work is advanced
at two of the company's joint venture projects, namely Gahcho Kué, which is a
joint venture with Mountain Province Diamonds and Camphor Ventures, and Fort à
la Corne, a joint venture with Kensington Resources and Cameco Corporation. In
June De Beers signed an option agreement with Tahera Corporation for
exploration and potential development of the De Beers property adjacent to
Tahera's Jericho Diamond Project in Nunavut.
De Beers has two mining projects under development in Canada, Snap Lake
in the Northwest Territories and Victor in Northern Ontario.
De Beers continues its exploration effectiveness drive aimed at improving
sample treatment technologies and reducing results turnaround times. The
company has doubled the capacity of its indicator mineral sorting laboratory
in Toronto and quadrupled the concentration efficiency of its Sudbury sample
preparation facility. Similar improvements are being implemented at the
company's sample treatment and laboratory facilities in other parts of the
world, including its macro-diamond recovery laboratory in Johannesburg, South
Africa. These improvements are aimed at continuously improving the competitive
advantage enjoyed by De Beers and its diamond exploration partners.

[dimonfind]

Diamond miners strike at De Beers
By Edmund Conway (Filed: 25/08/2004)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2004/08/25/cnbeer25.xml&sSheet=/money/200...


De Beers was scrambling to keep its biggest and most lucrative diamond mines running yesterday following an illegal strike by Botswanan workers.



The diamond giant's Botswanan wing, Debswana, which produces almost 70pc of its stones, said union leaders had been ordered to appear in court after at least a third of its miners failed to appear for work.

Debswana insisted that the strike would not impair production, although union leaders claimed all four mines had been shut down.

The strikes are an unwelcome intrusion for De Beers, which is currently renegotiating its mining contract with the Botswanan government, co-owner of Debswana.

The deadline for the talks has had to be extended until the end of the year, after the company and the government failed to agree on terms this summer.

De Beers also faces competition from a number of new mines in Canada and Russia, which are touted as the growth areas for the industry in future decades.

Botswanan mining unions were told earlier this month that a strike would be illegal, but yesterday insisted that they had lost control of workers, who are unhappy with current pay conditions. The union is demanding a pay increase of 24pc and a 16pc rise in living expenses, but the management at Debswana is offering just 10pc more of each.

The International Federation of Chemical, Energy Mine and General Workers last week criticised De Beers for what it called an "inferior" and "miniscule" pay offer.

"Members of the [unions] at Debswana's mines are largely responsible for the heightened production and continual profitability of this enterprise, yet are treated like neglected stepchildren," said general secretary Fred Higgs.

A De Beers spokesman said the company had done its best to avoid a strike.

"The current situation is that a number of people remain on strike, which is contravention of a court order," he said. "We are open for negotiations when that group of people decides to speak to us.

"Clearly this is going to have an impact on production, but not, at the moment a serious impact."

[dimonfind]

Treasures from the ground

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

http://morganhilltimes.com/life/lifeview.asp?c=120668

Polishing rubies and sapphires in Chantaburi, Thailand. The country produces fewer mined gems these days, but remains a manufacturing and trading center.



Gems are among the most gorgeous examples of nature at work, even though the jewels we admire get a helping hand not afforded to phenomena like sunsets and snow-capped peaks. When we imagine gemstones, few of us picture hunks of rough minerals formed deep in the Earth’s core. Instead, it’s polished, faceted little dazzlers set in jewelry that we have in our mind’s eye - even though they may also have been heat-treated, dyed, irradiated, laser-drilled, oiled and fracture-filled to produce greater color saturation, clarity and weight. And if we don’t get excited by such images, people expecting gifts from us this holiday season certainly might.

Apart from geologists, few people would consider gemstones in their natural state to be particularly beautiful - though ideas of what is “natural” and “unnatural” are not entirely clear-cut. After all, even a gem merely extracted from its host rock could be considered “unnatural.”

Generally, though, humans have been untroubled by this hair-splitting for a long, long time. Our ancient ancestors mostly just liked the bright shiny things they came across in their daily lives. Millennia ago, people living inland collected the attractive pebbles they found along riverbanks, and coast-dwellers gathered up shells and coral.

Ater a while, people figured out they could stick gems in wet clay and bake them in the sun to create an even lovelier token. Or drill holes in mussel shells and string them together to make a necklace. After thousands of years of this sort of thing, people began mining, cleaving, polishing and shaping gemstones, harvesting and stringing pearls, and setting them in jewelry with improving metallurgical technology.

Which brings us to modern times - those three-month’s-salary engagement rings and all the rest. Let’s look at some of the gemstones we all know and love.

Diamonds

Diamonds are by far the most popular gems on the planet and, for a number of reasons, they have come to dominate the gemstone trade.

Diamonds are famously the hardest substance known to man - even being said to tip Cupid’s arrows - but they are also easily split along the cleavage points of their crystal formation, making them fairly easy for manufacturers to work with. The ancients valued diamonds - then mostly found in streams - for their hardness, though they did not have the technology to bring out a stone’s maximum beauty by polishing and faceting.

While fairly rare, and now almost exclusively extracted by deep-bore or open-cast mining - diamonds can be wrested from the earth at a high rate of return in countries where labor is cheap and environmental controls are lax. They have a high refractive index, meaning cut diamonds show a great deal of “brilliance,” “scintillation” and “fire” - in other words, they’re sparkly.

There are other gemstones rarer by far. Still others possess higher refractive properties. But a combination of several superior qualities caused diamonds to be prized long before market leaders De Beers ever stepped into the picture. Born out of the Kimberley, South Africa diamond rush of the 1860s and ’70s, De Beers formed through an unlikely alliance of two Englishmen - upper-class colonialist Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato, a boxer-cum-actor from London’s East End. The company - named after a Cape Colony farm they bought from a family called De Beers, and where they sank two diamond mines - quickly put strong emphasis on public relations, and by the early 20th century had been able to position the diamond as the “king of gemstones.”

The classification and study of diamonds over the past 100 years has far outpaced that of any other gemstone, only adding to the strength of the diamond’s market position. Meanwhile, colored diamonds - ranging from yellows, greens, blues and reds to browns, blacks and pinks - have found a new popularity in recent years, and fetch prices even higher than their “white” cousins on the market.

Not that it matters much to the trade which diamond you buy, because from the retail price the shop will keep around 40 percent, while the maunufacturer/wholesaler and De Beers (or some other mining company) will each pocket around 30 percent.

What’s for sure is that relatively little profit will trickle down to miners in those countries where the gems are mined, notably Botswana (now the world’s largest producer), Namibia, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Angola. Diamonds are also mined in Australia, Russia and Canada, and continue to be found in small quantities in India, Brazil, Indonesia, Burma and elsewhere.

To this day, De Beers, which was taken over in the 1920s by Ernest Oppenheimer, a former clerk in its London office, distributes the majority of the world’s rough diamonds to a select band of around 120 manufacturers. Though De Beers’ pre-eminence is no longer at its 1920s peak, when it controlled about 90 percent of the world’s rough diamonds, at around 65 percent - or $5.41 billion in 2003 - it is still sufficient to have it barred by anti-trust laws from operating in the U.S. (De Beers plead guilty to price-fixing before a U.S. court last month in a move that will apparently lead to the end of over 60 years of anti-trust rulings against the cartel.)

Emeralds

Along with diamonds, rubies and sapphires, emeralds are among the “precious” stones which attract the highest prices of all gemstones at auction, as well as on the wholesale and retail markets. Relatively soft and almost always marred by non-emerald mineral inclusions, emeralds are nonetheless highly prized - largely due to their color, which many regard as the epitome of green. Emeralds are member of a larger mineral family, beryl - but only green, gem-quality beryl is designated emerald.

Of late, however, emeralds have lost some of their luster, as the common practice of filling their usual fissures and cracks with nonemerald material to produce a smooth, clean-looking stone has come under fire from the public. While they remain one of the four “classics,” their prices have generally dropped over the past 10 years, from a peak of $11,000 per carat for high-quality goods to a low of $6,000 in 2000.

The best emeralds, it is agreed, come from Colombia, while deposits of lesser-quality green beryl occur in Brazil, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Madagascar, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and elsewhere.

Rubies and sapphires

Corundum is the mineral classification of both rubies and sapphires, second in hardness only to diamond. But while a sapphire is corundum of any color other than red, rubies throughout history have been only associated with gems of the deepest crimson and fetch higher prices than even blue sapphires. Indeed, the ancients often described any transparent red gem as a “ruby,” including garnets, spinels and tourmalines.

Meanwhile, a constant debate is waged over the cut-off point between pink sapphire and ruby - with the most vitriolic arguments generally coming from those who possess stones perilously close to the divide.

Before diamonds came onto the scene, rubies and sapphires held positions of the highest esteem. Legends surrounding these gems are plentiful, such as the mythological valley of rubies that were guarded by gigantic birds of prey called rocs, appearing in the Arabian Nights and elsewhere. Treasure-seekers were supposed to have tossed pieces of meat into the inaccessible valley, where the rubies that literally covered the ground would stick to the meat. The rocs would eat the meat and pass out the rubies in their cliff dwellings. The treasure-seekers could then climb down and claim their prizes. And often get eaten by rocs for their troubles.

Many modern gemstone researchers believe the legendary valley is none other than Burma’s Mogok Valley, where rubies may have been mined since as early as AD 500, and probably long before. It is possible that the tales of predatory birds were created to keep invaders away from the mines, which today continue to yield the finest, “pigeon’s blood” rubies. Burma is the source of the finest rubies in the world, with Mogok the top location and Mong Hsu a sourceof lesser-quality gems. Cambodia, Vietnam, Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania and Sri Lanka are also ruby-producing countries, while Thailand now has few of the deposits that once made it a top exporter.

The benchmark for blue sapphires - the most prized color in sapphires - are the highly prized Kashmir gems, but today Sri Lanka, Burma, Madagascar, Cambodia, Thailand and Australia are the chief sources. “Fancy color” sapphires - including pinks, greens, purples, yellows, as well as clear and nearly black corundum - are found throughout the world, most heavily concentrated in the main ruby- and blue sapphire-rich nations.



Semi-precious gems

For want of another term, “semi-precious” is the adjective attached to any gem that isn’t a diamond, emerald, ruby or sapphire. It’s a designation that isn’t well-liked by producers, dealers and retailers, who generally prefer “colored stones” to describe all gems except white diamonds. And who can blame them, when an incredibly rare and beautiful color-change stone like alexandrite is lumped together with common quartz? Or consider the gems with deep cultural significance, such as jade in China, or those with colors scarcely found anywhere else in the natural world, such as the vivid neon-blue of Paraiba tourmaline, discovered in Brazil in 1989.

Of course, such semi-precious gems often sell for prices that rival the precious quartet, while spinels, garnets, peridots, amethysts, aquamarines, bloodstones, opals and others get their day in the sun thanks to birthstone sales. Other semi-precious gems wax and wane in popularity; witness the tanzanite, tsavorite and spessartite fads of a few years ago, or the current craze in China for Canadian ammolite.

With regards to almost all transparent semi-precious gems, most connoisseurs prefer them to be “eye clean,” with no visible mineral inclusions. However, a small number of gems are actually valued for their inclusions, such as rutilated quartz, or for spectral phenomena, as with precious opal’s “play of color” and cat’s-eye chyrosoberyl’s dancing band of light. Semi-precious gems come from all over the world, with the heaviest concentrations in South and Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Amazonia.



Organic gems

All sorts of organic material is used in jewelry, from bones to leather to wood. But “organic” gems are generally taken to mean just three: pearls, amber and coral. Pearls are the natural result of mollusks coating irritating grit with a secreted substance but are now predominantly “cultured”, a process which involves inserting grit - usually small pieces of mollusk shell, actually - into harvested freshwater and oceanic mollusks. Amber received a new notoriety with the film “Jurassic Park,” and coral - popular with Italian jewelry designers and cameo artists - is increasingly rare due to over-harvesting and pollution.

We all know what coral is, but gem-quality coral is a pinkish, smooth variety found in the Mediterranean Sea and generally shaped into cabochons (oval-shaped pieces that are flat on one side) or beads. Amber is fossilized pine-tree sap, which sometimes contains the remains of insects and other creatures trapped in the sticky resin before it hardened, and is found primarily in the Baltic countries and the Dominican Republic.

Lookalikes

Again we must dust off our definitions of “natural” and “unnatural.” A synthetic diamond, strictly speaking, is a diamond - crystallized carbon - but few diamond lovers would agree. Up until recently, it was more expensive to create a synthetic diamond than to mine the real thing. Today, synthetic diamonds are almost exclusively used for industrial and high-tech purposes. For the most part, the “fakes” people buy are more properly termed simulants, or even “stand-ins.” Cubic zirconia, for example, is a synthetic gem, grown in a lab, and is a common diamond simulant used to keep the price of a jewelry piece low. What it isn’t, however, is a synthetic diamond. Glass is the most common gem simulant of all!

The term “simulant” probably reflects marketing agendas more than scientific classification - any time you see a gem, synthetic or not, extolled for its “diamond-like properties,” you’re hearing about a simulant. Meanwhile, everyone in the gem business being extremely touchy about their own products, many sellers of synthetics prefer the terms “created gems” or “man-made” gems.

Gem treatments fly even further below most consumers’ radar. Nearly all gems can be treated to improve their looks, from the gentle heating that brings out tanzanite’s purplish-blue color, to the irradiation of topaz in linear accelerators to achieve a royal blue coloration. Untreated gems generally attract much higher prices than treated stones - and these days they’re much rarer. Consumers should always ask about treatments from their jeweler.

The bigger picture

In recent years, consumers have generally become increasingly aware of the political and humanitarian repercussions of their purchases - and so, too, gemstones have been scrutinized. Because both gemstone mining and manufacturing are concentrated in poor countries, several aspects of the gem trade have come under fire.

Diamonds have received the most heat of late. The United Nations and several NGOs decry the trade in diamonds from war-torn African nations such as Sierra Leone and Angola, where factions fight for control of diamond mines whose proceeds go toward purchasing more weapons to terrorize civilians.

It has also recently come to light that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda financial network may have included Sierra Leonean diamonds purchased through Liberia’s exiled president Charles Taylor.

Meanwhile, the use of child labor in gem manufacturing in India and elsewhere has drawn the attention of human rights activists for years. Political conditions in Burma and Colombia, the primary sources of rubies and emeralds respectively, have served to taint those gemstones, too.

For lovers of gems, these issues can be confusing. On the one hand, gem mining and manufacturing are vital industries in some of the world’s poorest economies. A consumer boycott or economic sanctions would have devastating consequences for the people who depend on gems for their livelihood.

On the other hand, there is a deep unfairness surrounding the plunder of such natural wonders from the developing world, brought to the West’s luxury markets for the equivalent of slave’s wages in many places. What wealth does flow back to the place of origin is generally scooped up by violent despots and greedy merchants instead of trickling down to the miners and gem-cutters themselves.

In the end, for many of us, gems may simply be things to be marveled at, and that’s as deep into the alternately beautiful and sordid business as we’d like to go.

Engagement rings aside, of course…

[dimonfind]

Miner to strike it rich in gem sale

FRED BRIDGLAND

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=936572004

AN IMPOVERISHED African miner is set to become a millionaire after unearthing one of the largest diamonds ever found.

The Scotsman can reveal that the 182-carat stone recently dug up by a freelance miner, Mohamed Kalo, in the Aredor Mine in the West African state of Guinea has already been sold to a mystery buyer for more than £5 million, according to sources in Conakry, the Guinea capital.

And Mr Kalo may be about to get very lucky. Guinea’s mines minister, Alpha Mady Soumah, said that, under the country’s minerals and mining laws, the miner is entitled to half the value of the diamond’s initial sale.

The government will receive 7.5 per cent of the sale price under its deal with the Canadian mining company Trivalence.

But the mystery buyer of the as-yet unnamed Aredor diamond may never be known.

"This discovery is thanks to God, who gave me this chance," said Mr Kalo, 20.

The stone, about the size of a fist, was found four weeks ago by the miner, armed only with a shovel. He immediately handed it in to Trivalence.

The corporation mines a 500-square-mile area in one of the most remote parts of Guinea, using a combination of bulldozer draglines with huge buckets plus hundreds of freelance diggers to comb the alluvial deposits. The discovery has caused great excitement at Trivalence’s Vancouver headquarters because the history of diamond mining suggests that when one giant stone has been found, the area inevitably has others.

"Remember that this diamond is at least 60 to 90 million years old," said Judith Kinnaird, professor of economic geology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

"It was formed in intense heat 100 to 130 miles below the surface of the earth and worked its way slowly to the surface through a kimberlite volcanic pipe.

"The stone is like a work of art. A diamond in its rough state is absolutely unique."

In truth, the diamond is actually little more than a small piece of super-heated carbon.

Yet the Aredor diamond has been under intense guard since Mr Kalo uncovered it in the headwaters of the Niger River. It was flown to Conakry and locked in the vaults of Guinea’s Central Bank. No photographs of the diamond have yet been released.

Freelance discoveries of big diamonds in central and west Africa always trigger frenzied speculation. In this case, Mr Kalo, probably earning no more than the average Guinean’s £325 a year income, had little choice than to hand the stone to Trivalence. It was too big to be slipped into a pocket, or even swallowed, to be smuggled from the mining site. In any case, discovery would have meant a long jail term and even death in one of Guinea’s fetid prisons.

Prof Kinnaird, formerly a lecturer at St Andrews University, said the mystery buyer of the Aredor diamond could do one of two things with the stone.

He or she could keep it in its "mint condition" as an art work and object of value, much as the 616 Diamond, a 616-carat stone discovered at Kimberley, South Africa, in 1876, has been preserved uncut for 128 years.

Derek Schaeser, the curator of the De Beers Museum at Kimberley, where that diamond lies in a vault, said it was so valuable that he was not permitted to put a price on it.

Alternatively, the buyer of the Aredor could send the stone to one of the world’s leading expert cutters crammed into the small network of streets around the Pelikaanstraat in Antwerp, which represent the centre of the world trade in diamonds, to be skilfully cut into several perfectly shaped gems.

"What enhances a stone best of all is the cutting of it," said Prof Kinnaird. "Otherwise the light doesn’t bounce out of the stone, with those flashes of brilliance that really make a diamond."

The biggest rough diamond of all time, the bowling-ball-sized Cullinan, was 3,106 carats and cut into two of the world’s largest gem diamonds, seven other major jewels and about 100 other stones.

Arguably the world’s most famous diamond, the Cullinan was found in an underground mine wall in 1905 in the Premier Mine at Cullinan, 25 miles north-east of Pretoria.

It was sold for £6,250 to the Transvaal government, which then insured it for £800,000 and presented it as a gift to King Edward VII. The stone was studied for several months before the cutter cleaved from it the Star of Africa, a 530-carat jewel that was embedded in the sovereign’s royal sceptre as part of the Crown Jewels.

The second largest stone, the 317-carat Cullinan Two, is embedded in the Imperial State Crown.

Mr Schaeser said the Aredor diamond ranks among the 70 or 80 biggest ever found.

Prof Kinnaird reckoned it probably ranked higher than that.

A spokesman at the Johannesburg headquarters of De Beers, the world’s biggest diamond mining company, said that diamonds are valuable because of their rarity. All the diamonds ever found would not fill a double-decker bus, he said.

If the Aredor diamond is to be cut into several jewels, their ultimate value will depend on a number of factors, said Prof Kinnaird.

First, she said, it will be graded by colour, ranging from blueish whites at the top end to wine-coloured at the bottom.

"Then it must have good clarity. Diamonds get several categories from internally flawless, down to slightly flawed and so on. But skilled cutting adds value most of all."

Prof Kinnaird said that what will excite the Guinea government and Trivalence most of all is the knowledge that other big stones must come from where the Aredor diamond had its birth.

That means the search will be intensified for narrow kimberlite pipes plunging deep down into the earth.

The Trivalence executives in Vancouver will now be feeling they negotiated an excellent deal in 1996 with the Guinean government.

An Australian firm had just pulled out of a 50/50 Aredor deal that had proved uneconomic.

Conakry lured Trivalence into Aredor with a guarantee of 85 per cent of the profits.

With Mohamed Kalo’s find, the gamble has paid off handsomely. And the find will doubtless attract many more poor residents of Guinea to quit their low-paid jobs and head for the mines - in the hope of following in the footsteps of Mr Kalo.

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

• Diamond is simply carbon - just like charcoal or graphite. The difference is caused by the bonding between adjacent atoms to form a diamond’s unique crystalline structure.

• Diamonds have been known for at least 3,000 years and were first mentioned in the Bible.

• It is thought the earliest diamonds were found in about the 12th century BC in India, which remained the most important source until 1725, when diamonds were discovered in Brazil.

• The Indian and Brazilian deposits had been almost exhausted when, in 1866, the Eureka diamond was discovered in South Africa.

• The world’s most famous diamond, the Cullinan, was found in 1905 near Pretoria. It was sold for £6,250 to the Transvaal government.

• Through promotion from the De Beers Company and the Diamond Promotion Service, diamonds have become the most desired gemstone.

• Diamonds Are Forever (1971) was Sean Connery’s last Bond film as a young 007. Bond investigates a diamond smuggling operation in Amsterdam but stumbles across a more sinister plot hatched by Blofeld to use a laser in space to cause world mayhem.

ROB TOMLINSON

[mineralme]

Dimonfind

I posted the article on rising Diamond Prices on the DMXP board
DeBeers is exploring on property adjoining Delta Mining in South America. Thanks and good luck on this board.

This is from Delta Mining and Exploration:
Delta Mining and Exploration Corp., http://www.deltamine.com/ is a mineral exploration company with an extensive portfolio of diamond and gold properties throughout the state of Montana, and in Bolivia, South America. Delta controls some 7,500 acres throughout Montana located within the Wyoming Craton where many of North America's diamonds have been found. Another 10,000 acres of prospective diamond and gold properties are controlled in Bolivia, South America.

There is a report called the "Scout Report" dated May 25 which says in part:

http://www.scoutco.com/researcharchive.html

In addition to its Montana properties, Delta has acquired the rights to explore and mine three properties
in the politically and economically stable country of Bolivia. All of these properties exhibit the initial
indications of kimberlite formations (and potentially diamond deposits), and one in particular is also
quite intriguing in terms of its gold-bearing potential. The company has done preliminary exploration
of these properties though the use of airborne magnetics. Of the three properties, potentially the most
exciting is the Independencia field, which is two-thirds owned by the Delta Mining and Exploration,
and one-third owned by De Beers, the industry behemoth, which has been actively exploring its
portion of the field.

[dimonfind]

Diamond Prices Rise

http://news.tbo.com/news/MGBK5M36SXD.html

De Beers, the world's biggest diamond company, will raise the price of rough diamonds by an average of 5 percent this month as jewelry demand remains ``strong'' for the rest of the year. The increase, De Beers' third this year, follows a 7 percent increase in retail diamond sales in the year's first six months, the Johannesburg, South Africa-based company said. It raised prices by 3 percent in January and 5 percent in March.

De Beers said last month that first-half net income jumped 26 percent to $341 million because of higher diamond prices.


A staff and wire report>

[dimonfind]

De Beers Canada Sponsoring Pow Wow

(August 10, '04, 6:17 Edahn Golan)

http://www.idexonline.com/start.asp

De Beers Canada will sponsor the 2004 Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) Pow Wow, to be held later this month in Toronto.



The Pow Wow, a traditional Native Americans council or meeting, is the first Pow Wow to be held at the CNE and will attract Aboriginal artists from across Canada to perform traditional and contemporary music, dance and storytelling as well as to showcase unique Aboriginal food, arts and crafts.



“As a diamond mining and exploration company with many projects in the far north, De Beers Canada makes it priority to build long-term relationships with the Aboriginal communities in which we operate," said Richard Molyneux, President and CEO of De Beers Canada.



"It is a privilege for De Beers to promote cultural diversity and to contribute to this celebration of Native Canadian Culture."



De Beers is currently developing two diamond mines and working on some 30-exploration projects across the country.



The CNE Pow Wow will take place in Bandshell Park and over three days from Friday August 20 to Sunday August 22.

[Kimberlite]

Thanks. I wasn't trying to be a smartie. I like to print out the articles in their entirety for filing and further dd but can only do it with the links. Thanks Again!

[dimonfind]

More

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040525/latu078_1.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040506/RDIAM06/TPBusiness/Canadian

http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=21544263&brk=1

http://north.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=nwt-diamondwoes06092004

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=&fArticleId=2163036

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040729/sfth050_1.html

[dimonfind]

Here some links


http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040616005...

http://www.tacyltd.com/Research_Materials_Full.asp?id=53813

http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/news_releases.mhtml?d=59882

http://www.idexonline.com/start.asp

http://www.tacyltd.com/Research_Materials_Full.asp?id=53852

http://www.petroleumnews.com/pnads/505902990.shtml

http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=22069536&brk=1

http://www.idexonline.com/start.asp

http://www.cnw.ca/fr/releases/archive/July2004/14/c2922.html

http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2921462

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=aK_65ZCnYcro&refer=europe

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040716005...

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040719005...

http://business.scotsman.com/agriculture.cfm?id=827762004

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2004/07/24/cnbeer24.xml&menuId=242&sS...

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=&fArticleId=2163036

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=14467957&method=full&siteid=50...

http://www.tacyltd.com/Research_Materials_Full.asp?id=53937

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/28/1090694026555.html?oneclick=true

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040728005...

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040728/to224_1.html

http://www.idexonline.com/start.asp

[SPARK]

Kim, leave it to you... lol

[Kimberlite]

Could you please supply a link with your articles. They only show an author name and submission date. I'd be interested in knowing where they originate from. Thanks

[dimonfind]

De Beers leading $400m marketing strategy
July 26, 2004

By Nicky Smith

Johannesburg - De Beers, the biggest diamond miner, and its partners in the "supplier of choice" marketing strategy will spend $400 million (R2.48 billion) this year selling the idea that diamonds are rare and signify such things as fidelity.

In 2003 De Beers' marketing arm, the Diamond Trading Company, spent $180 million on marketing while its partners spent $272 million on high-quality marketing aimed at stimulating demand while keeping prices high.

Gary Ralfe, the managing director of De Beers, said on Friday at the release of interim results that Japan, one of the company's most important markets, had shown its first signs of growth in 10 years, expanding by between 1 percent and 2 percent.

The group recorded double-digit growth in China and Hong Kong and sales in the UK and France were also healthy.

The company remained concerned about its South African operations, where five out of its seven mines were making operating losses at the current rand/dollar levels.

Ralfe said the company would prefer voluntary retrenchments before it started firing people or closing mines. Once a mine was closed, he said, it would not open again.


On a brighter note, recoveries from dumps at the Kimberley mine were yielding 2 million carats a year.

The company said it was talking with the Angolan state-owned diamond mining firm Endiama and the Angolan government to secure its return to one of the world's most diamond-rich countries.

"Our geologists would dearly love to return to the country," Ralfe said.

It now had permits to start with its Canadian Snap Lake project.

"We should be able to proceed with the construction of the mine," Ralfe said, adding the company would be producing about $500 million worth of diamonds out of Canada by 2010.

De Beers pleaded guilty to charges of price fixing industrial diamonds in the US recently and paid a $10 million fine.

The company said it believed it was legally compliant on both the industrial and gem side of its business, but no explicit guidance has been given to the company by the US department of justice to this effect.

De Beers said it was in no rush to get back to the US.

[dimonfind]

De Beers loses its sparkle
By Edmund Conway (Filed: 24/07/2004)


De Beers, the giant of the diamond industry, said yesterday its total earnings fell during the first half of the year, casting grave doubt over the future of the world's oldest and best-known diamond mines.



The group said that it had placed a number of its South African operations under review, including Kimberley, the world's first diamond mine, and the Cullinan, whose stones decorate the Crown Jewels.

These mines are no longer generating a profit because of the strength of the South African rand and their diminishing resources.

The news comes at a critical time for the company, which is renegotiating the rights to its biggest mine. At the same time, the European Commission is considering De Beers' contract to buy diamonds from Alrosa, a Russian state-owned miner.

Turnover at the group, which is 45pc-owned by mining group Anglo American, rose 2.2pc to $2.98 billion (£1.6 billion) during the six months to June. Total profits fell from $365m to $341m despite a rise in diamond prices during the period.

Managing director Gary Ralfe said the company had failed to meet its production targets for the year.

"We must register some disappointment here," he said. "We have set ourselves the target of increasing carat production by 7pc a year but problems in Botswana, the world's largest diamond producer, mean we have fallen short and are 20pc behind our budget.

"If you add our three mining companies together we still came out 2.6pc behind last year and 18pc behind budget."

De Beers has seen its share of the world diamond market fall from around 80pc to less than 50pc in the past 10 years as new mines have been discovered in Russia and Canada.

[dimonfind]

De Beers Opens Door to U.S. Market With Price-Fixing Settlement
July 16 (Bloomberg) -- De Beers, the world's biggest diamond company, may return to the U.S. for the first time in more than half a century after pleading guilty to price-fixing charges in an Ohio court and agreeing to pay a $10 million fine.

De Beers, which Ernest Oppenheimer turned into a global cartel in the 1930s, plans to open a store on New York's Fifth Avenue as the company loosens its grip on sales of uncut gems and taps the $57 billion-a-year retail market. The U.S. accounts for 55 percent of retail diamond sales and has been closed to De Beers since the first antitrust complaint was filed after World War II.

``This has been a sword hanging over their head,'' said Alan Miller, chief executive of Johannesburg-based Stanlib Asset Management, which manages $25 billion, including shares of Anglo American Plc. Anglo owns 45 percent of De Beers. ``I am feeling good about this.''

The guilty plea Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Columbus, Ohio, came four years after Johannesburg-based De Beers, which sells three-fifths of the world's uncut diamonds, stopped hoarding gems to drive up prices, committed itself to being more transparent and backed a campaign to ensure that sales of diamonds no longer finance civil wars across Africa.

``De Beers is bringing a chapter of its history to a close,'' the company said in a statement. ``The decision to resolve this matter is consistent with our continuing commitment to creating a new, modern De Beers that is fully prepared to assume its role as a responsible corporate global citizen.''

Anglo American

Anglo American, the world's second-biggest mining company, received $386 million in profit before one-time items and goodwill amortization from its stake in De Beers last year. The figure was 23 percent of Anglo's total earnings and its biggest source of profit.

The Oppenheimers, Africa's richest family, and the Botswanan government own the rest of De Beers. Nicky Oppenheimer, Ernest's 59-year-old grandson, is the company's chairman.

Gaining access to the U.S. market will increase earnings and bolster Anglo's share price, Miller said. Anglo shares rose 11 percent to 1,130 pence during the past 12 months in London, outpacing a 6.6 percent gain in the FTSE 100 Index.

De Beers in 2001 formed a $400 million retail jewelry venture with LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world's biggest luxury goods company. The venture has one store in London and three in Tokyo.

The store on Old Bond Street in London offers jewelry ranging from earrings that sell for 600 pounds ($1,114) to a necklace of 52, two-carat diamonds at 1.4 million pounds. Customers can inspect the gems through microscopes, which reveal an invisible De Beers trademark, and devices that flash beams of light through each stone to detect imperfections.

Manhattan Store

Plans to open the New York store are ``absolutely in place,'' and the opening date depends on construction schedules, Guy Leymarie, the venture's chief executive, said from his office in London. De Beers is considering its options for business in the U.S., said Andrew Bone, a London-based company spokesman.

``De Beers has made the strategic decision that it must be able to operate in the United States of America, apparently at any price,'' said Chaim Evan-Zohar, the principal shareholder of Ramat Gan, Israel-based industry consultant Tacy Ltd.

On Tuesday, De Beers was fined $10 million after pleading guilty to charges that it fixed prices for industrial diamonds in 1991 and 1992. The Justice Department in turn agreed not to pursue additional criminal charges.

``This guilty plea reflects the department's persistence in the fight against illegal price fixing,'' R. Hewitt Pate, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, said in a statement.

Gina Talamona, a Washington-based spokeswoman for the department, declined to comment on whether any remaining issues would prevent De Beers from doing business in the U.S.

``Our matter with them is resolved,'' she said. ``That's pretty much all I can say.''

Travel Concerns

De Beers had previously refused to appear in an American court, and its directors wouldn't travel to the U.S. for fear of prosecution.

``We chose not to do business there,'' Bone said. ``We didn't want to open ourselves to an element of risk.''

Founded by British colonist Cecil John Rhodes 116 years ago, De Beers sells uncut gems to 87 exclusive clients through a series of 10 auctions each year. U.S. customers buy diamonds at the sales, which take place in other countries. Other U.S. business, such as advertising, is handled through intermediaries.

``The U.S. Department of Justice Department has achieved what it wants, to get a scalp, and it allows De Beers to get back into that massive market,'' said Anwaar Wagner, an analyst at Metropolitan Asset Managers in Cape Town, South Africa, which oversees the equivalent of $5.3 billion. ``It opens the door.''

Civil Suits

Still, by admitting guilt De Beers may have opened the way for civil lawsuits. W.B. David & Co., a former De Beers client, this month filed a lawsuit in New York demanding $100 million in damages caused by De Beers's alleged monopolistic practices. De Beers said the suit was without merit.

``The problem is a whole host of other guys are going to sue them,'' said Daniel Sacks, who oversees mining stocks at Cape Town- based Investec Asset Management, which oversees $39 billion. ``Their business model is still monopolistic in nature.''

Ernest Oppenheimer, who founded Anglo American in 1917, gained control of De Beers 12 years later. As other producers increased output in the 1930s, he sought to control prices by setting up the Diamond Corp., which bought gems from competitors and sold them to diamond cutters. The company controlled about 80 percent of rough diamond sales as recently as the 1980s.

De Beers on Wednesday said it completed the sale of its diamond stockpile, which was worth $4.9 billion in 1999.

Competition Increases

Selling diamond engagement rings, necklaces and earrings directly to customers may be De Beers's best opportunity for growth as competitors once again increase production to take advantage of increasing demand for uncut gems.

De Beers first-half sales will likely rise 5.5 percent to $3.08 billion, according to the median estimate of four analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

BHP Billiton, the world's biggest mining company, and No. 3 Rio Tinto Group have opened diamond mines in Canada to compete with De Beers's pits in Botswana and South Africa and the company's ships that sift gravel off the Namibian coast.

De Beers's dominance of the rough diamond market isn't in danger for now.

``It will take a long time for the legacy of being the world's dominant supplier of rough diamonds to erode,'' said John Meyer, an analyst at Numis Securities in London. ``In the meantime they will grow their margins.''

[dimonfind]

An Israeli tycoon is helping to force De Beers to surrender its control of the world's diamond market

HOW much turmoil can the diamond industry sustain without shattering? On July 13th in an Ohio court De Beers, the world's largest producer of rough stones, finally pleaded guilty to charges of price-fixing of industrial diamonds and agreed to pay a $10m fine, thereby ending a 60-year-long impasse. De Beers executives are at last free to visit and work directly in the largest diamond market, America.

A few days earlier, on July 9th, the first case of successful industry self-regulation against trade in so-called “conflict diamonds” took place when Congo-Brazzaville was punished for failing to prove the source of its diamond exports. And on June 28th Lev Leviev, an arch-rival of De Beers, opened Africa's biggest diamond-polishing factory in Namibia.

Behind all these events lies sweeping change in an industry that sells $60-billion-worth of jewellery alone each year. For generations it has been run by De Beers as a cartel. The South African firm dominated the digging and trading of diamonds for most of the 20th century. Yet the system for distributing stones established decades ago by De Beers is curious and anomalous—no other such market exists, nor would anything similar be tolerated in a serious industry.



Nicky Oppenheimer, head of De Beers
Aug 7th 2003
The problem of conflict diamonds
Jan 2nd 2003
The diamond business
Oct 18th 2001
The changing diamond business
Jun 1st 2000
The diamond business
Dec 18th 1997



Johannesburg



South Africa



Wars



The UN posts information on conflict diamonds. Global Witness comments on Congo-Brazzaville's removal from the Kimberley Process. See also De Beers, Debswana, Namdeb, the World Diamond Council, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Alrosa.





De Beers runs most of the diamond mines in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana that long produced the bulk of world supply of the best gemstones. It brings all of its rough stones to a clearing house in London and sorts them into thousands of grades, judged by colour, size, shape and value. For decades, if anyone had rough diamonds to sell on the side, De Beers bought these too, adding them to the mix. A huge stockpile helped it to maintain high prices while it successfully peddled the myth that supply was scarce.

De Beers has no interest in polishing stones, only in selling the sorted rough diamonds to invited clients (known in the trade as "sightholders") at non-negotiable prices. Sales take place ten times a year. The favoured clients then cut and polish the stones before selling them to retailers.

With its near monopoly as a trader of rough stones, De Beers has been able to maintain and increase the prices of diamonds by regulating their supply. It has never done much to create jobs or generate skills (beyond standard mining employment) in diamond-producing countries, but it delivered big and stable revenues for their governments. Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania and South Africa are four of Africa's richest and most stable countries, in part because of De Beers.

One family got extremely rich too. The Oppenheimers created the “single-channel marketing” system of shovelling all available stones to the clearing house. They came to dominate De Beers after Ernest Oppenheimer took control of most of Namibia's diamond mines nearly a century ago. He formed a mining conglomerate called Anglo American, before grabbing the chairmanship of De Beers. The family is thought to be worth around $4.5 billion today; Nicky Oppenheimer, Ernest's grandson, is Africa's richest man. The family still owns a more than 40% direct stake in De Beers, and its members—Nicky Oppenheimer and his son, Jonathan—run the firm. It may own more De Beers shares held indirectly through Anglo American's 45% stake.

But this stable, established and monopolistic system is now falling apart. Three things have happened. First, other big miners got hold of their own supplies of diamonds, far away from southern Africa and from De Beers's control. In Canada, Australia and Russia rival mining firms have found huge deposits of lucrative stones: BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Alrosa have been chipping away at De Beers's dominance for two decades.

De Beers once controlled (though did not mine directly) some 80% of the world supply of rough stones. As recently as 1998 it accounted for nearly two-thirds of supply. Today production from its own mines gives it a mere 45% share. Only a contract to sell Russian stones lifts its overall market share to around 55%.

That is a painful shift, but De Beers is still the biggest diamond producer. And rival mining firms do share one big interest with it: high prices for the stones they dig from the ground. That is why, although it is under pressure, the central clearing system that sustains high prices could yet survive a bit longer. Rather than controlling a pure monopoly, De Beers might be able to run a quasi-cartel that stops the market from opening fully. De Beers says the price of rough stones is still rising; the price of polished stones has risen by 10% this year, according to polishedprices.com, an independent diamond website that tries to track such things.



Worth fighting for
The next challenge might be manageable too. De Beers's system is highly secretive. Nobody knows the ultimate source of particular diamonds it sells, as all are mixed together in London. But De Beers faced extraordinary public-relations pressure after it emerged that rebel armies in Africa were funding their wars by selling what became known as conflict diamonds.

Since 2000 almost 70 countries and all of the big industry players (under the threat of consumer boycotts and activist campaigns by, among others, a London-based group called Global Witness) have adopted standards designed to prove the origins of their diamonds. The so-called Kimberley Process is now in force: governments must issue certificates of origin for the stones they export, and the stones can then be tracked.

It was under this agreement that Congo-Brazzaville was punished last week by being expelled from the Process (the first country ever to be thus censured). As a result, legal trade in its diamonds should cease. It is a test case for the industry.

The introduction of the Process could have threatened De Beers, which wanted to maintain the right to buy diamonds anywhere it pleased and to keep its purchases secret. Eli Izhakoff of the World Diamond Council, an industry body based in New York, says the new rules mean “the industry is changing—it is nothing like it was four or five years ago.”

But although the regulations make it easier to track the flow of rough diamonds, they have not required De Beers to open all its books to public scrutiny. Most of those diamond-fuelled African wars are over. And the firm has a declining interest in buying up any rough stones that appear on the market. It knows that its ability to control world supplies is dwindling.

It is the third challenge that is much more troublesome. This is a threat to break up entirely the way De Beers organises the industry. It can best be summed up in two words: Lev Leviev.

Like the Oppenheimers, Mr Leviev has made himself very rich over the past three decades. An Israeli of Uzbek descent, he is reputedly worth around $2 billion. Though he has interests in transport and property, his real love is diamonds. His Lev Leviev Group is the world's largest cutter and polisher of them. He has mining interests too: his fleet of clanking mining ships began operating off Namibia's coast earlier this year, sucking up diamonds from the sea bed. He boasts it is the world's second-largest fleet; only De Beers has a bigger one.

And Mr Leviev recently moved into diamond retailing. He claims that he is the only tycoon with interests in every stage of production from “mine to mistress” (a canard in the industry holds that men buy more diamonds for their mistresses than for their wives). But his real power lies in the cutting and polishing businesses.



Mr Leviev says he is the only tycoon with interests in every stage of production from “mine to mistress”


He has factories in Armenia, Ukraine, India, Israel and elsewhere. These give him power to challenge De Beers's central clearing house and seek instead to channel stones directly, and at a lower price, to his own polishers. There is a more personal explanation too. Mr Leviev long worked as one of those De Beers sightholders, buying unseen parcels of stones at non-negotiable prices. Even as recently as last year he was among De Beers's clients in South Africa. Being forced to take or leave the stones granted by the diamond cartel infuriated him. He was eager to strike back.

His breakthrough came in Russia. Mr Leviev has cultivated close ties with Russian politicians, including Vladimir Putin long before he became president. Already well known as a cutter and polisher of diamonds in the 1980s, Mr Leviev was asked to help the Soviet state-owned diamond firm set up local factories 15 years ago.

He agreed and formed a joint-venture with the state firm, now called Alrosa. But he insisted that stones for the factories be supplied directly from Russian mines, rather than diverted through De Beers's central system. De Beers was furious at the loss of supply, but the factories got their local stones. When the factories were privatised, Mr Leviev somehow emerged as the exclusive owner.

What happened in Russia set a pattern for clashes elsewhere. Mr Leviev has found that governments welcome factories that create jobs and add value to the diamonds they export; it is a smart way to snipe at De Beers.



Can Lev levitate?





Angola was next. Angola's diamonds are among the world's best when measured by value per carat (see chart) and promise a lucrative return for anyone who can market them. De Beers has had a long interest there. Mr Leviev first invested $60m in the country in 1996, financing a mine at a time when civil war was raging. And just as he cultivated Russia's governing elite, he struck up warm relations in Angola.

It was a well-timed move. The Angolan government despised De Beers. In the days when its monopoly was secure, De Beers regularly bought up any supply of rough diamonds that appeared on the market. It was accused of helping, indirectly, to fund UNITA, the rebel army in Angola, which sold huge quantities of diamonds. In 2001 De Beers ended a spat with the government by quitting the country. By then Mr Leviev had already moved in, eager for another supply of good stones.

By the time the government won Angola's war in 2002, thereby getting control of all the country's diamond mines, the contracts it had struck with Mr Leviev (ie, those lost by De Beers) were worth $850m a year, a sum greater even than that lost by De Beers in Russia.

Mr Leviev has not had it all his own way. Last year Angola's government abruptly cancelled three-quarters of his deal. Some observers accused Mr Leviev of using underhand means (he is close to the daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos, Angola's president) to win them in the first place. Yet, however he did it, Mr Leviev showed in Angola that he could barge aside De Beers in a valuable area near its southern African heartland.

Mr Leviev has been inspired to take another swipe at his rival. On June 28th he took the arm of Sam Nujoma, Namibia's president, and guided him around a sparkling new diamond-polishing factory in Windhoek, Namibia's capital. “For years we have been told this could not be done,” commented various Namibian politicians.

Now Mr Leviev, saviour-like, strode around his factory, showing off row upon row of workers, who wore uniform green overalls and fiddled with chrome machines and modern flat-screen computers. Mr Leviev boasts that, with its capacity for 550 workers, the factory is Africa's biggest.

Jonathan Oppenheimer, affable heir to the Oppenheimer dynasty, says he does not understand what Mr Leviev is up to in Namibia: “And when we don't understand, we worry.” He is right to be concerned. Mr Leviev's obvious next step in Namibia is to challenge De Beers directly. De Beers's mines are run in a joint venture with the government called Namdeb. A 1999 mining law lets the government force any miner to supply stones locally. If Mr Leviev demands it, the government could tell De Beers to provide stones directly to Mr Leviev's new factory, a repeat of the Russian blow.



Clearing up
More important, if Namibia is able to establish a viable cutting and polishing industry using its own stones, then why not every other diamond-producing country too? That would seriously threaten De Beers. Mr Nujoma all but dared his neighbours to follow suit. “To our brothers and sisters of neighbouring states, Angola, Botswana, South Africa, I hope this gives you inspiration to try to imitate what we have here,” he said at the factory opening.

Mr Leviev is building another factory in Luanda, Angola, partly hoping to curry favour with the government. More important, he is offering to build a factory in Botswana, the jewel in the crown of De Beers's empire. De Beers has close ties with the Botswana government: they share a joint venture, Debswana, that exclusively mines the country's diamonds; Botswana gets a huge share of its foreign currency and a large part of its national income from diamond revenues. It is a similar arrangement to that in Namibia.

In an interview in Windhoek last month, Mr Leviev said he had offered Botswana's government a factory to employ “tens of thousands” of people, a scale vastly larger than in Namibia. A senior civil servant from Botswana toured the Windhoek factory with Mr Leviev. As Mr Oppenheimer concedes, this is a delicate time for Mr Leviev to be courting in southern Africa. De Beers is still renegotiating the terms of an 18-year lease on the Jwaneng mine, in southern Botswana, which is due to expire at the end of this month. The mine is thought to be worth $1.3 billion a year, producing stones of a quality that would have Mr Leviev salivating.

More broadly, De Beers must renegotiate the terms of all its marketing operations in Botswana and in Namibia every five years. These talks are also due. While no-one expects Mr Leviev to break up De Beers's relationships in these countries—Mr Oppenheimer is confident that the government will not do anything to risk its big revenues—his appearance on the scene puts pressure on De Beers.

The obvious step for De Beers now would be to take on Mr Leviev at his own game. In Botswana and Namibia there have been a few diamond-polishing factories backed by De Beers. But De Beers does not want to be involved in that stage of diamond production.

It is first a miner and only belatedly a retailer of diamonds. But it is blocked from the production steps in between as long as it remains the major supplier of stones to the whole industry, says Mr Oppenheimer. Buyers of its stones would suspect De Beers of holding back the best diamonds for its own manufacture and would revolt.

Nor does Mr Oppenheimer think a polishing industry is viable in many diamond-producing countries, whatever Mr Leviev says. In Namibia just a few hundred people work as polishers and cutters. There are few skilled workers, the scale of production is small and wage costs are roughly ten times that of India, which dominates the world market and where 900,000 people work as basic polishers.

Nor are small countries, such as Namibia, likely to develop the top-level skills needed for the very highest-quality stones. Those skills are concentrated in a few cities, such as Antwerp, Tel Aviv and New York. Within southern Africa, only South Africa has a long-established cutting and polishing industry, to which De Beers supplies some good-quality stones (“specials” in the language of the trade). But Mr Leviev probably does not care. A few factories may be uneconomic, but if they allow him to get hold of direct supplies of diamonds, then so be it.



A polished act
Mr Oppenheimer is worried that a more fragmented industry will not just damage De Beers, but that the whole industry might collapse. Consumers believe diamonds are valuable largely because of decades of clever marketing by De Beers and its clients. De Beers itself spent $180m on advertising last year, its clients a further $270m. That sort of spending could not be co-ordinated and sustained, he suggests, if the industry were to fragment.

That is a risk; but there are opportunities for De Beers too. As it has lost market share, the old goliath has become nimbler. No longer focusing exclusively on defending a cartel, De Beers is freer to make decisions according to commercial interest. For instance, it now buys fewer stones at uneconomic prices; profits matter more than market share. A trimmer De Beers, with a pared down list of clients, might even be able to make bigger profits than the old giant. Last year it produced healthy profits of $676m on sales of $5.5 billion.

But its decision to settle American antitrust charges laid against it in 1994 points to how much it is feeling the pressure. De Beers executives should now be free to travel to America to conduct business without fear of arrest. That should make it easier to promote De Beers LV, a hitherto disappointing partnership with the luxury-goods firm LVMH to market De Beers-branded diamonds.

That venture may prove essential for De Beers's long-term health, as more producers bet on getting a presence in profitable diamond retailing. Already rivals are moving: Canada's Ekati mine markets its stones directly to consumers; Mr Leviev's firm struck a deal in May with Bulgari, an Italian jewellery maker, to market Leviev-branded stones. De Beers's days of market dominance are clearly drawing to a close. But consumers should not get too excited just yet. Whether a duopoly or oligopoly emerges, diamond prices are not going to plummet. Mr Leviev will be among those putting a stop to that.

[dimonfind]

Sudbury Contact quadruples land position in area around newest Ontario diamond discovery
Stock Symbol: SUD (TSX)

TORONTO, July 14 /CNW/ - Sudbury Contact Mines Limited reported today
that its large, recently discovered KL-22 kimberlite has been confirmed as
diamondiferous. KL-22 was previously indicated to be approximately 9.5
hectares in size on the basis of its geophysical signature. KL-22 is part of
the Company's 100%-owned Timiskaming Diamond Project, located just west of the
historic mining town of Cobalt, Ontario, 550 kilometers north of Toronto.

Largest Landholder in Highly Prospective Diamond Camp

KL-22, along with previously announced diamond-bearing kimberlite KL-01,
was discovered on Sudbury Contact's Klock Property west of the Montreal River.
An aggressive staking program has been carried out since January and as a
result the land package around the two kimberlite pipes has more than
quadrupled in size from approximately 7,500 hectares to 36,000 hectares. The
Company's past till sampling, along with alluvium sampling recently carried
out by the Ontario Geological Survey, has directed additional staking,
expanding the property position to capture areas of other likely kimberlite
intrusions. The Timiskaming Diamond Project now covers an area in excess of
65,000 hectares making Sudbury Contact the single largest landholder in the
area.
The two diamondiferous discoveries lie some 20 kilometers southwest of
the Company's 95-2 diamond deposit and are within a large area close to
infrastructure and accessed by a network of new logging roads that include a
bridge across the Montreal River. Both discoveries were made by a combination
of detailed airborne geophysics and target-specific till sampling. This work
has also identified other high priority targets that await core drilling on
the original Klock property claims.

Small Sample Yields Large Diamond Count

Petrographic and kimberlite indicator mineral analyses have confirmed
that the KL-22 kimberlite is a magmatic, highly macrocrystic hypabyssal
kimberlite exhibiting a modest peridotitic diamond signature and an
encouraging diamond carrying capacity. The discovery hole was drilled
vertically into the southern lobe of this large bilobate body, encountering
kimberlite from 21m to the end of hole at 87m. Microdiamond results from the
Thunder Bay Mineral Processing Laboratory of Kennecott Canada Exploration Inc.
were for five samples totaling 84.94kg and returned 19 microdiamonds, of which
7 could be classified as being macrodiamonds as they have at least one axis
exceeding 0.5mm, one of which exceeded 0.5mm in two dimensions. The breakdown
per sieve class is as follows:

<<
------------------------------------------------------------------
HK Facies
------------------------------------------------------------------
Sieve Class Diamonds Weight of Diamonds
(mm sq. mesh) (No.) (carats)
------------------------------------------------------------------
1.70 to 2.36 0 0
1.18 to 1.70 0 0
0.85 to 1.18 0 0
0.600 to 0.850 0 0
0.425 to 0.600 0 0
0.300 to 0.425 2 0.00236966
0.212 to 0.300 5 0.00422776
0.150 to 0.212 4 0.00134187
0.105 to 0.150 8 0.00075437
------------------------------------------------------------------
Totals 19 0.00869366
------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Processed 84.94 kilograms
------------------------------------------------------------------

To put the KL-22 and KL-01 results into context, the two discovery
reverse circulation samples from the now known higher grading Weathered TKB of
Kimberlite 95-2, yielded 9 diamonds from 77.92 kg., of which 3 were one-
dimensional macrodiamonds and one of those exceeded one millimeter in two
dimensions.

Large Tonnage Potential in Emerging Diamond Camp

The magnetic signature for KL-22 covers an area of approximately 9.5
hectares which would place it second in size in Eastern Canada to the roughly
16 hectare Victor Pipe owned by De Beers Canada Corporation. The Victor Pipe
is located in the James Bay Lowlands along the same structural trend hosting
the Timiskaming kimberlite cluster. The 95-2 and KL-01 pipes both have
approximate 5 hectare surface areas, which along with the nearby KL-22
kimberlite, potentially provides the Company with a very large tonnage
project. With other high priority targets awaiting drill testing and the large
newly acquired land package to explore, the Company is optimistic that other
diamondiferous kimberlite pipes will be discovered. An updated location map
has been posted on the Company's website, www.sudburycontact.com which shows
the kimberlites in relation to the claim package and superior infrastructure
of the project or click on the link below:

http://ir.thomsonfn.com/IRUploads/10493/FileUpload/LOCATION.pdf

On-going Regional Exploration

The company is currently receiving tenders from airborne geophysical
survey contractors to fly a detailed survey over the newly acquired ground
centered around the Klock Property. Once the anomalies have been prioritized a
helicopter-supported till sampling program will be planned and implemented.
Both of these programs can be conducted in late summer or early fall. The
combination of detailed airborne surveying and follow-up till sampling
programs has proven to be an effective exploration approach leading to the
discovery of the KL-01 and KL-22 pipes. Exploration plans being currently
formulated also include delineation drilling of the new kimberlite pipes and a
large program of anomaly testing through follow-up geophysics and core
drilling.

Kimberlite SC-118 Update

On the Quebec portion of the Timiskaming Diamond Project, kimberlite
SC-118 recently received two additional delineation drill holes. Both holes
were successful in intersecting kimberlite and microdiamond results are
expected shortly. Several high priority targets remain untested in Quebec and
will be the focus of future drilling.

Audit of Encouraging 95-2 Diamond Deposit Results Nearing Completion

As previously disclosed, the Company's 95-2 Kimberlite returned an
initial parcel of 67.35 carats of diamonds from a 652 tonne mini-bulk sample
derived from reverse flood large diameter (LDD) drilling. The preliminary
results were encouraging for the volumetrically dominant East-Central portion
of the deposit, where recovered grades averaged approximately 19.18 carats per
hundred tonnes (cpht) for the upper 24m of kimberlite, and 13.3 cpht down to
300m, which was the deepest test. The grades and diamond parcel encountered
thus far in Kimberlite 95-2 are encouraging, and have established it as
Canada's southernmost diamond deposit and certainly one of the most promising
given it's proximity to infrastructure.
The Company has engaged De Beers Canada Exploration Inc. to process and
recover the diamonds from seven audit samples of the 61 mini-bulk samples
which made-up the LDD program. Processing at De Beers Grand Prairie facility
is complete, and all concentrates have been shipped under secure conditions to
Johannesburg, South Africa to complete the audit process. Results are expected
later this month, following which the Company will be in position to have
expert valuations and grade modeling carried out, along with the first
resource calculations for the deposit. Once this work is complete, final
mini-bulk sample results will be reported along with an outline of the next
phase in 95-2's advanced evaluations.

Scientific and Technical Data

Sudbury Contact Ltd. has prepared this disclosure of diamond exploration
results using guidelines that have been recommended by the Canadian Institute
of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum.
Kennecott Canada Exploration Inc. Mineral Processing Laboratory is
accredited ISO 17025 by the Standards Council of Canada.
The following information relates to the Qualified Person, Quality
Control and other requirements regarding the above properties as defined under
the Canadian Securities Administrators' National Instrument 43-101:

(1) Paul Sobie, registered Professional Geologist of Ontario and Vice
President of MPH Consulting Ltd. of Toronto, is a consulting
contractor to Sudbury Contact on the Timiskaming diamond project.
He is the Qualified Person on the project responsible for the
Quality Control and reporting of project information, and as such
Mr. Sobie possesses the required qualifications.
(2) Mr. Sobie has verified the data disclosed in this press release,
including the underlying sampling, analytical and test data
underlying the disclosed results.

About Sudbury Contact

Sudbury Contact Mines Limited is an exploration and development company
with diamond and gold properties in Ontario, Québec, Northwest Territories,
Newfoundland, Nevada and Idaho. Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE: AEM, TSX:
AGE) is currently the largest shareholder of Sudbury Contact.

[dimonfind]

NEW DIAMOND TRADING COMPANY EXECUTIVE TEAM ANNOUNCED
July 01, 2004
Gareth Penny, Managing Director of the Diamond Trading Company (DTC), has announced his new executive team – a diverse team that represents five nationalities and has over 200 years of accumulated experience within the Group. “We have every confidence this team will provide the leadership we will need to meet the demands of the next few years. We may work in the DTC but we are all part of one organisation focused on the mining and marketing of natural gem diamonds,” says Gareth Penny.

Purchasing Director Des Cavanagh joined DTC in 1977 as a diamond sorter and valuer. He has held a variety of positions with the De Beers Group with executive responsibilities in the Sales department. Des, who has had close involvement with all the main diamond cutting centers, is currently the Managing Director for the Diamdel group of companies.

Des Cavanagh

Sorting Director Brian McDonald joined DTC in 1970 also as a diamond sorter. In 1981, as the Jwaneng mine came on stream, he set up the sorting operations in London and then took this team over to Botswana. Following a posting as General Manager at BDVC he returned to London in 1996 as Director of Sorting.

Brian MacDonald

Sales Director Varda Shine came to the DTC in 1997 having worked for 14 years at Diamdel Israel. Since joining the DTC she has worked in most areas of the Diamond Division and in the last few years she has been heavily involved in projects directly related to the implementation of the DTC’s new strategic plan.

Varda Shine

Marketing Director Stephen Lussier joined the DTC as the marketing director for the US and Canada in 1985 from NW Ayer, the advertising agency, in New York. He served as director for the Asia-Pacific region before becoming Executive Director for Marketing in 2002. Stephen will serve as Gareth’s deputy in London.

Stephen Lussier

External Relations Director Rosalind Kainyah qualified as a barrister in 1988 and joined the DTC in 2002 as the company’s commercial lawyer. She has also advised other De Beers Group companies on matters of corporate governance, the legal implications of proposed strategic projects and on public relations. Prior to joining the DTC, Rosalind was an environmental lawyer advising UK government departments and agencies on environmental policy and legislation. She also worked briefly as an environmental lawyer for Anglo American Corporation of South Africa.

Rosalind Kainyah

Human Resources Director Leon Smith joined DTC in February 2004 from De Beers’ head office in Johannesburg. He joined De Beers in 1990 from Anglo American Corporation’s Gold Division. Following a variety of different HR positions in a number of De Beers mines in South Africa, Leon was transferred to Head Office where he was involved in a range of strategic HR transformation initiatives, including the organisational workstream responsible for the restructuring of De Beers Consolidated Mines into a distinct South African mining company.

Leon Smith



Finance Director Mike Page joined the DTC in 1988 as financial controller. After De Beers secondments to various different countries in Africa, including three years as Group Financial Manager with Debswana, he returned to the DTC in 1998 as Manager of the Finance Department. He is a Member of the Associate Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Mike Page

Research & Development (R&D) Director Martin Cooper joined the DTC R&D department in 1978. He has a BSc in Physics and an MSc in Materials Science from London and Bristol universities respectively, and is a specialist in diamond and laser physics.

Martin Cooper

Pricing and Supply Chain Control Director Alan Campbell joined the DTC in 1980 and spent seven years as a negotiator for De Beers’ southern African production. He established De Beers’ representative office in Moscow and stayed there for four years as the DTC’s resident diamond expert, participating in contractual negotiations with Alrosa and the Russian government. He joined the DTC sales department in 1996 and as one of the architects of Supplier of Choice he devised the Policyholder Statement documentation. As head of Sales Planning Alan has overhauled the DTC’s distribution process, conceiving and implementing the ITO system, which is the client selection and allocation process that underpins DTC’s Supplier of Choice strategy.



Alan Campbell

[dimonfind]

Canada Offers Alrosa Participation in Diamond Surveys

(July 1, '04, 6:02 Edahn Golan)

Alrosa was offered to participate in Canadian geological land surveys and the development of Canadian diamond deposits.



According to a report in the Russian AK&M, the surprising Canadian proposal was made by the Canadian Deputy Natural Resource Minister Harry Nashem to Alrosa’s President Vladimir Kalitin during a visit of an Alrosa delegation in Canada.



A delegation of top Alrosa management, headed by Alrosa president Vladimir Kalitin, visited Canada in January seeking areas of cooperation.



During the visit the group met with some of Canada’s diamond mining enterprises such as miners BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and De Beers.

[dimonfind]

Namibia Seeks More Control of Its Diamonds



Business Day (Johannesburg)

June 30, 2004
Posted to the web June 30, 2004

Emma Muller
Johannesburg

Prime minister signals policy change

NAMIBIAN Prime Minister TheoBen Gurirab yesterday signalled a wind of change for the country's diamond industry and possibly that of the entire southern African region.

In an interview this week at the opening in Windhoek of the largest diamond cutting and polishing factory in Africa, backed by Israeli entrepreneur Lev Leviev, Gurirab said a process of change had started.

At the moment, De Beers markets the vast bulk of production from Namibia and all the production from Botswana.

Gurirab said his government would be prepared to invoke a specific clause in the Namibian Diamond Act of 1999, which gives the government the right through section 58 to force producers such as NamDeb, the De Beers joint venture, to make rough available to resident diamond manufacturers.

This is in line with Canada's Northwest Territories where producers are effectively forced to supply a portion of their production locally for domestic processing.

"We would ourselves want to do what the Canadians are doing. Once Lev Leviev has made the policy decisions that goods should be supplied by Namibia, we should sit together and arrange that it happens. We would revisit the 10% clause as a way forward to supply Leviev with diamonds.

"Leviev did his part, Namibia must reciprocate," he said.

Gurirab's remarks highlight a wider political ambition in diamond-producing countries such as SA, Angola, Russia and Canada to manufacture diamonds domestically through local supplies and subsequently brand them as diamonds from their country of origin.

As well as the plant in Namibia Leviev is building a factory in Angola.

The arrival of Leviev in Namibia comes at time of growing unease in southern Africa over the way diamonds have been traditionally marketed by De Beers.

SA is reviewing its diamond sector regulations, including the terms on which De Beers and the industry export diamonds.

Official sources in Botswana have said the government is considering selling part of its production on the open market .

Speaking at the official opening of the plant Gurirab said: "You don't realise what you have done for us, Leviev.

"You have reminded us that diamonds in our country belong to our people. There has been deliberate programming, indoctrination and brainwashing."

He said Namibia was told it was not a good place to have a facility like the one which is backed by the Leviev group.

"You have introduced us to our level. You have brought boys and girls from the street. In a matter of months and weeks they are the ones who are cutting and polishing our diamonds. We have now put that lie to rest," he said.

Namibian m inisters in their speeches also emphasised the need to add value to rough diamonds found in Namibia.

Relevant Links

Southern Africa
Mining
Industry and Infrastructure
Namibia



Minister of Trade and Industry Jesaya Nyama said: "To our neighbours Angola and Botswana, we hope you imitate what has been taking place here.

"The time has come to put an end to the export of raw materials."

[dimonfind]

SouthernEra ups its stake in Messina

6/29/2004




Companies in this story
SouthernEra Resources Limited


Articles in related categories
Africa
Capital Markets
Platinum Group Elements




SouthernEra Resources (SUF-T) has exchanged more than 10.5 million of its shares for 3.7 million shares in Johannesburg-listed platinum miner Messina.
The shares involved represent 12.4% of SouthernEra's and 18.4% of Messina's issued and outstanding shares. In the end, the deal boosts SouthernEra's stake in Messina to 91.5%. The shares issued by SouthernEra are subject to a hold period of one year.

The equity dilution resulting from the transaction is more than offset by the increase in ownership of Messina, says SouthernEra CEO Patrick Evans.

Messina owns the Voorspoed, Doornvlei and Zebediela sections of the Greater Messina platinum project in South Africa's Bushveld complex. Measured resources at Greater Messina total 26.3 million tonnes grading 5.4 grams platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium plus gold (PGEs plus gold). An additional 66.6 million tonnes running 5.05 grams PGEs plus gold are classified as the indicated resources. The inferred category is home to another 32.53 million tonnes averaging 5.4 grams PGEs plus gold.

Messina's first of three planned mines, at the phase 1 Voorspoed section, is about half-way to full production. At full steam, the Voorspoed complex is expected to mine 120,000 tonnes of ore per month, resulting in the annual production of around 200,000 oz. PGEs plus gold.

The company has been issued a mining licence for the Doornvlei section. In mid-2002, SouthernEra and black economic empowerment partner Mvelaphanda Resources were granted the rights to the Dwaalkop section of Greater Messina. A feasibility study considering the joint development of the Doornvlei and Dwaalkop sections is slated for release in the third quarter; the results of a scoping study of the Zebediela section are also expected at that time.

Earlier this year, with the price of platinum at heights not seen in more than 20 years, SouthernEra said it was considering splitting its platinum and diamond holdings into two separately listed companies (T.N.M., April 19-25/04).

SouthernEra's PGE portfolio also includes the Millennium platinum project, on the southeastern lobe of the Bushveld complex, in Mpumalanga province. The project is home to an indicated resource of 30.6 million tonnes grading 3.76 grams PGEs plus gold for around 3.7 million contained ounces.

The company's key diamond asset is a half-stake in the Klipspringer mine in Limpopo province. Mining there is slated to resume once the rand depreciates. De Beers Consolidated Mines, the diamond unit of Anglo American (AAUK-Q), and an affiliated black-empowerment company, Naka Diamond Mining, own the remaining interest in Klipspringer.

SouthernEra also has diamond exploration projects in Angola, Canada, South Africa, Gabon, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Australia.

[dimonfind]

Diamond Discoveries International: Petrographic Report confirms Kimberlite on Torngat Property
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 28, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Further to the press release dated April 19, 2004, which related to indicator mineral evaluation of dyke samples identifying the St. Pierre Dyke and Ned's Dyke as kimberlites, Diamond Discoveries International Corp. (OTCBB:DMDD) has recently received a petrographic report from Al Millar, consulting petrologist for Millar and Associates, Ottawa, Ontario with respect to three selected samples, each from a different dyke located on the Torngat Property. This report definitively confirms the presence of kimberlite rock in the samples from Ned's Dyke and St. Pierre Dyke. Petrography is the microscopic description and identification of rocks and minerals. Several suspected pipes along Ned's Dyke and St. Pierre Dyke will be drilled during the 2004 field program in order to confirm the existence of kimberlite pipes and test for diamond content.

Robert Dillman, B.Sc., DMDD's consulting geologist states, "Al Millar's report is of great importance since it confirms the presence of kimberlite and establishes the Torngat region as one of only a handful of kimberlite fields in North America. In all the fields founds so far, there is one or more kimberlites with diamonds and each of the fields has at least one kimberlite with economic or near-economic diamond grades. Until now, the diamond exploration community is under the impression that the Torngat region has only aillikite (lamprophyre) dykes. Lamprophyre is hard to sell! Millar's report also suggests that the mantle nodules contained in the kimberlite are trending towards hartzburgite which is the preferred trend for diamond."

DMDD is pleased about the confirmation of kimberlite occurrences on the property and will be focusing on these kimberlite dykes and associated suspected pipes. The Company will begin its 2004 exploration season which will commence in mid July.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD


"John Kowalchuk"
------------------
John Kowalchuk P.Geo., President & CEO

About Diamond Discoveries International Corp.

Diamond Discoveries International Corp. is an US exploration company with executive offices in Vancouver, B.C. Through its wholly owned subsidiary Diamond Discoveries (Canada) Inc. it controls certain mineral permits in the Torngat Mountains Peninsula, north-eastern Quebec. The Company is focused on exploring for diamonds. The Company has located more than 50 kimberlite dykes and several kimberlite pipes. This summer, they plan on actively sampling the targeted areas for diamonds both by bulk sampling and core drilling.

About Millar & Associates

Millar & Associates is a group of geologists who specialize in microscopic description of rocks and minerals. The group has an excellent reputation and is used by diamond exploration firms such as De Beers and Ashton Mining.

Forward-Looking Statement

This news release contains discussion of items that may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of securities laws that involve risks and uncertainties. Although the company believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurances that its expectations will be achieved. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include the effects of general economic conditions, actions by government authorities, uncertainties associated with contract negotiations, additional financing requirements, market acceptance of the Company's products and competitive pressures. These factors and others are more fully discussed in Company filings with U.S. securities regulatory authorities.

CONTACT: Diamond Discoveries International
Mr. John Kowalchuk B.Sc. P.Geo., CEO
604-683-1368
Fax: [phone]
T.F: 866-400-1368
[e-mail]

[goldsmith2]

Caledonia Mining Corp.'s - Barbrook Gold Mines Ltd


The 100% owned Barbrook Mines Limited
("Barbrook")
is located near the town of Barberton in
the Mpumalanga province of the Republic of
South Africa.

Pretoria and Johannesburg are approximately 375 km
to the west.



Barberton is the natural and historic center of
the Barberton goldfield in the Mpumalanga province.

The town has a history of mining dating back more
than 100 years.

Barbrook's mining licence covers an area of
approximately 43 square kilometres (10,625 acres),
extends for a distance of about 28 km along strike,
and is the consolidated mining area of
about 20 old Gold Mines, of which some
produced Gold in more than 50 years.



http://www.caledoniamining.com/SABar_map.gif

Barbrook Gold Mines Ltd.

RE: Plant Testing and Modifications;
Testing:

A number of alternative metallurgical circuits to improve
the gold recovery have been tested and circuit improvements
have been identified.

In late 2003 and early 2004 Caledonia introduced new
flotation equipment and concentrate oxidation technology
at Barbrook to improve the gold recovery and
production economics.

In early 2004, Barbrook commenced the evaluation of
"ultra-fine milling" and "whole-plant Biox®" processes
to determine whether further gold recovery improvements
and improved economics can be attained.

As further test work is completed on these process
alternatives, and following on the feasibility study,
more revisions to the metallurgical plant are expected.


Modifications:

Between late February and early May 2004
the operations at the plant were temporarily
suspended to carry out modifications which
would improve metallurgical Gold
recovery and increase
throughput from...

6,000 tonnes per day (tpd)

to 8,000 tonnes per day (tpd).


The plant modifications included:

Installation of a "fines washing and screening" section
in the crusher circuit to improve the existing crushing
and screening efficiency and to allow for a finer
screening size of the crusher product.

As tests at Barbrook and SGS Lakefield laboratories
in Johannesburg had shown that satisfactory flotation
gold recovery could be achieved at coarser feed ore
sizings, the Barbrook mill (that previously milled to
a product size of about 85% minus 75 microns) was
reconfigured to produce a coarser grind to about
65 to 75% minus 75 microns.

This should increase the mill throughput to
about 8000 tonnes per month or higher.

An "organic carbon pre-float" circuit was added to
the front of the flotation circuit to remove much
of this 'preg-robbing' material from the circuit.

This should reduce the amount of blinding agent added
in the leach circuit and consequently reduce the
foaming problem in RIL.

A second G-cell has been installed in flotation for
re-cleaning of the cleaner flotation concentrate.

This is expected to increase the gold grade in the
final concentrate product whilst maintaining gold
recovery and make operation of the flotation
section less complex.

Changes have been made in the regrind/thickener
section to achieve finer regrind sizes and more
consistent concentrate feed densities to leaching.

The PreOx and intensive agitation sections have
been replaced by 2 Aachen oxygen dispersion units.

Pilot plant tests at Barbrook have shown these units
provide excellent oxygenation of the fine reground
flotation concentrate and lead to more consistent
leach gold recoveries.

The primary Aachen unit performs most of the oxygen
demand requirements and the secondary unit is used
to promote rapid cyanidation and maintain oxygen
levels into the RIL section.

Automatic cyanide measurement and addition has been
installed in the RIL section to optimize gold recovery
and reduce cyanide consumption.

The size of the elution facility for loaded resin has
been increased.

This will allow for improved gold security and greater
flexibility of RIL operation.

It is expected that the above plant changes should
enable the mine attain a sustainable economic operation
on Taylors ore until the Biox® or the
"ultra-fine milling" processes have been fully
tested and evaluated.

Mine Development and Planning:

In 2004 it has been decided to develop mining
operations at Taylors on the Barbrook line
below the 10 level, at the upper levels of Taylors
and easterly along strike towards the Crescent area
and on the Zwartkoppies line in order to provide
additional ore to the metallurgical plant when
the new metallurgical processes are
proven successful.

The old mining areas above 7 level in the "French Bob"
structure have been re-evaluated and the Mine is
currently re-opening these for production.

CALVF GOLD $402.30/oz Up $7.70 per ounce

PLATINUM $810.00 per ounce



CAL GOLD $402.30/oz Up $7.70 per ounce



GOT CAL GOLD MINES SHARES ?

Btw. CALVF Gold Ore Res. increased in value today
with about $6/oz times 2.5 mil. oz = $15 million?


http://www.tse.com/HttpController?GetPage=QuotesViewPage&DetailedView=DetailedPrices&Market=....

CAL ~ NO TRESPASSING ~ ACTIVE MINING SIGNS ~

To Platinum PMG Properties ~ Polokwane Smelter ~

$500 Million Invested ~ The R1,5-billion smelter,
which is designed to produce 650 000 t of matte
a year, is situated at the Palmietfontein site
on the outskirts of Polokwane which is,
in turn, strategically situated between
the Northern and Eastern Limbs of
the Bushveld Complex.

This particular site was chosen as it offers
easy access for the haul-trucks delivering
from the mines.

A Merensky reef smelter such as the one at
Anglo Platinum¡¯s Waterval operation is run
at a lower temperature (about 200 ¢ªC lower)
than the UG2-type Polokwane smelter.

Eersteling Gold Mined

Eersteling Gold Mining Company Limited ("Eersteling")
on the JSE Securities Exchange South Africa ("JSE").

~ Caledonia Min. Corp. holds ~ Eersteling ~ NO TRESPASSING ~

~ ACTIVE MINING SIGNS ~ the mineral rights

over an area of more than >190 square kilometres of

Gold & PGMs Mineral Rich Land ~

~ The Last Great Frontier ~

~ unexplored reefs ~

Eersteling is located between the city of
Polokwane (Pietersburg) and the town of
Mokopane (Potgietersrus)
in the Limpopo Province of
South Africa.
@ http://www.ivarkreuger.com
www.caledoniamining.com

Caledonia Mining Corp. - Goedgevonden Diamond Property,,,

http://www.caledoniamining.com/diamonds.html

http://www.caledoniamining.com/dia_geo.html



http://www.caledoniamining.com/dia_lg.jpg



http://www.caledoniamining.com/dia_syf.html

Caledonia intends to initiate the program
along with the Goedgevonden Project
mentioned above.

As with the Goedgevonden Project, the results
from this program will dictate the nature
of future exploration programs.

Caledonia has also acquired the options
over two portions of two adjacent areas
of interest on the farms Eleazar and Buffeldoorn
where over 20 geophysical targets have
been identified.

2004 Objectives on the Goedgevonden

• Conduct a bulk sampling program on the,

- Goedgevonden diamond property -

in South Africa and
conduct a limited washing program on
the oxidized cap to collect a 100ct parcel
of stones which
can be assessed to establish
the coloured diamond stones
and the potential of the
Mine property.



GOT CAL GOLD MINES SHARES ?
@ http://www.ivarkreuger.com
http://ivarkreuger.proboards32.com/index.cgi?board=Caledonia&action=display&num=1088129804&a....
Imo. pass it along>>>>>>>>>>>

Precious Metals Spot Price's

[goldsmith2]

CMKX News and volume CMKX Results!

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CMKX message board

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Get a free stock screener to track
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Pinksheets

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Stockhouse message board.

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CMKX message board.


The lion has a CMKX message board


http://www.thelion.com

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Invetorshub Stock message board for CMKX

aLOT OF NEWS


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Many stock boards.


Yahoo CMKX message board

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Free real time quotes CMKX message board. I dont think you need to be registered to read them, but to post you need to register.


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Another CMKX forum

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Silicon Investor message board

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VOLUME IS huge! Small Cap centrer volume

http://www.smallcapcenter.com/snapshot_quote.asp?component=compinfo.asp&page=snapshot.asp&ti...


http://www.cmkxtreme.com/ mid month CMKX racing news

CMKX next car race

http://www.jeffarend.com/schedule.htm




www.cmkxtreme.com or www.jeffarend.com.


CMKX Diamonds & Nitro! last week racing news.


http://www.motocrosscanada.ca/demos/prnmag/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&...



Melvin speaks

Melvin on IBC Radio Today 6/1 (Mp3 Link)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://yazzi.com/cmkx/melvin2.htm


CMKX home page
http://www.casavantmining.com/index.html
http://www.casavantmining.com/picture_archive.html
http://www.casavantmining.com/video_archive.html
http://casavantmining.com/images/SitePics5/
"Project Surround" Click Zoom In (lower left bar,then click on map)
http://casavantmining.com/images/17x11_Oct03.pdf
http://www.explorationgis.com/falc_detail.html
Gold Claims ~ #SK claim @ top map cmkx
http://www.explorationgis.com/LR_goldbelt.html
Canadian Government map confirmation of diamonds!!!
http://cmkmdiamonds.proboards27.com/index.cgi?board=news&action=display&num=1085277666
http://142.165.150.133/website/sir_geological_atlas/viewer.htm

Map of all Kimberlite Pipes in Sask
http://www.pinechannel.com/s/Properties.asp?PropertyInfoID=632&PropertyMapID=676
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1092299/000111776803000002/schedule.htm

Educational
http://www.kaiserbottomfish.com/s/Educational.asp?ReportID=71104
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/diamonds/composition.html
http://magazine.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/commentarystory/GIGOLD/20030203/northernlights....
http://www.diamondregistry.com/check.htm



Bureau of Land Management Mining Law Administration:
http://www.blm.gov/nhp/300/wo320/minlaw.htm
http://interactive.usask.ca/ski/mining/search/rights.html
http://www.canadiandiamondcodeofconduct.ca/html/EN_home.htm
http://competition.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/incb-bc.nsf/en/home
http://competition.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/incb-bc.nsf/en/ct02818e.html
Frauds Scams Alerts
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/scams/scams_e.htm

CTV News: Peter Murphy reports on the hidden gems of Canada's north
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/HTMLTemplate/!ctvVideo/CTVNews/canada_diamonds_040113/20040113/?hub=Canada....

Traders Nation Radio Interview (Audio)Tom Allinder - Guest Host Interviews
Dr. Mark Hutchison, Consulting Geologist
http://www.tradersnation.com/cmkm.shtml
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_sccfrm/m0EIN/2003_Feb_25/98036193/p1/article.jhtml
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_sccfrm/m0EIN/2003_April_21/100402143/p1/article.jhtml?term=
http://members.iinet.net.au/~boxer/evaluation1.htm






Jeff Arend http://www.jeffarend.com/
http://www.nhra.com/2004/events/race10/preview.html

More pictures of CMKX-Treme Funny Car
http://www.sustainweb.com/cmkx_extreme_team.htm
Pictures of the CMKX-Treme & Crew on index pages 3,8,11
http://www.motorsportspictures.com/nhra/hrp_2004/oreilly/index.htm
More photos of the race.
http://www.uscanadian.net/sponsor.asp
http://www.houstonraceway.com/photo.html
http://www.nhra.com/
Espn2 TV Listing:
http://www.nhra.com/2004/tvschedule.html#current
http://www.nhra.com/2004/canadatv.html#current
http://www.nhra.com/2004/events/race10/schedule.htm

[dimonfind]

Mountain Province valuation looking better

2004-06-18 12:03 ET - Street Wire


by Will Purcell

De Beers Canada Corp. has updated its modelled diamond values for three key Gahcho Kue pipes in the Northwest Territories, producing some good news for its partners on the project, Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. and Camphor Ventures Inc. The Gahcho Kue diamond values increased by nearly 20 per cent over the past year, and that increases the likelihood that De Beers can make a mine work at Kennady Lake.

Investors nevertheless seemed less than enthused with the result. There was early interest in the shares of De Beers's partners following the news on Wednesday, but Mountain Province's shares closed seven cents lower at $1.75, shedding about 4 per cent of their value, while Camphor's stock struggled one cent higher, closing at 56 cents. Despite the lukewarm reaction, the prospects for the project now seem rosier.

A buoyant diamond market accounted for the hefty increases in the diamond values of the three pipes, with the Hearne body chalking up the largest increase, pegged at about 22 per cent. Early last year, De Beers had come up with a value of just $50 (U.S.) per carat for the Hearne diamonds, but that figure now stands at $61 (U.S.) per carat, thanks to the healthier state of the rough diamond industry.

The increase at Hearne is especially encouraging, as it returns much of the theoretical value that had disappeared in recent years, due to a declining rough gem market and a more conservative modelling technique used by De Beers over the past year or two.

After the first big sampling program in 1999, De Beers produced a diamond value of $71.50 (U.S.) per carat for its Hearne diamonds, but a second sampling effort in 2001 resulted in a decline to $63.50 (U.S.) per carat. That 11-per-cent drop was no big surprise however, as the rough diamond market had lost about 20 per cent of its value from a peak in the summer of 2000.

De Beers and its partners collected a new sample in 2002, coming up with signs of larger diamonds from Hearne, which inflated the hopes of speculators, who expected a big boost to the value of Hearne's diamonds. Those hopes were dashed last spring, when De Beers delivered not an increase, but a 21-per-cent decline in the value of the Hearne gems.

That lower value was partially attributed to a further decline in the general value of rough diamonds, but a majority of the decrease was apparently due to the new method of modelling the value of Hearne's diamonds.

That approach may prove to be a more accurate representation of the diamond value, but it could just as easily be unduly conservative. That will remain an unknown until the Hearne diamonds are actually mined, but the latest boost in value increases the likelihood of a Gahcho Kue mine providing the answer.

Things are even rosier at the 5034 pipe, which remains the flagship kimberlite of the project, with a current diamond value of nearly $75 (U.S.) per carat. That value handily tops a 1999 projection of $69.30 (U.S.) per carat that had been the previous best, and it exceeds the 2003 estimate of $62.70 (U.S.) per carat by about 18 per cent.

Curiously, although the modelled diamond values followed the same trend as the Hearne projections, dropping from 1999 highs to a low in 2003, the decline was significantly smaller at 5034. That should bode especially well for the project, should the De Beers estimates prove to be conservative.

The diamond value at Tuzo also managed a hefty increase, climbing to $49 (U.S.) per carat, up from a projection of $41 (U.S.) per carat that was set last year. As with 5034, the latest estimate for Tuzo is marginally higher than the levels determined after the 1999 mini-bulk test.

The increases should improve the chances of making a mine at Kennady Lake, although the process of proving, permitting and building a mine in the Northwest Territories can be an excruciatingly slow process for a notoriously impatient market. That impatience has led to investor grumbling about the seemingly slow pace set by De Beers, and the usual array of conspiracy theories have popped up, suggesting the delays are deliberate.

Those opinions come much to the chagrin of Mountain Province president, Dr. Jan Vandersande. "There is a shortage of diamonds in the world at the moment. De Beers needs diamonds, so why would they want to slow us down?" he said, adding that there were no new mines slated to start production, beyond the Snap Lake and Victor deposits." Those are not big mines," he stated.

Dr. Vandersande has a point. According to preliminary plans, a Gahcho Kue mine would produce about 3.2 million carats of diamonds per year, worth about $215-million (U.S.) annually. Meanwhile, based on De Beers's current plans and projections, the Snap Lake mine will produce about 1.5 million carats worth about $115-million (U.S.) annually, while Victor is forecast to produce about 560,000 carats, worth about $160-million (U.S.) on an annual basis.

A Gahcho Kue mine would therefore deliver more diamonds than the other two De Beers projects combined, and the dollar value would also rank at the top of the list. Furthermore, all three projects would produce gross revenues of less than $500-million (U.S.), which is just half of the estimated current shortfall in the rough diamond market.

As a result, De Beers is now in the midst of a major project study that carries a $25-million price tag. The first phase of that program is now complete, although the full report will not be finished until the middle of next year. That slow pace will likely add to the growing grumpiness of some of Mountain Province's long-term shareholders, but Dr. Vandersande believes it is an indication that De Beers believes it has a mine in the making at Kennady Lake.

De Beers is completing its investigation to a level that would be used to support future mine permitting requirements, and the study will include detailed engineering and geotechnical data that will progress far beyond the desktop studies that have previously been completed. "Based on everything De Beers is doing, it looks like we are going to be a mine," he stated.

Even the typically conservative De Beers seems in a cheery mood about its prospects at Kennady Lake. Company spokesperson, Linda Dorrington, said that a detailed environmental baseline study had commenced and would continue into the summer. She confirmed that the detailed technical investigation would continue until the middle of 2005, and the work would be taken to a level supporting permit applications, "if we decide the project proved sufficiently economic to warrant that."

Ms. Dorrington said that based on the outcome of the detailed investigation, the next steps to be taken at Gahcho Kue would then be decided. Presumably those next steps could involve laying firm plans to proceed with building a mine, but such a decision will not come quickly. "We do take a very thorough approach to everything and we will continue to do that," Ms. Dorrington stated, adding that the approach has worked for the diamond giant in the past.

The spring drilling program failed to produce much in the way of promotable news, and that may have added to the muted market reaction to the new valuations. Dr. Vandersande said that De Beers had drilled a few larger targets in the area surrounding the Kelvin Lake and Faraday Lake area, but without much success.

None of the targets, which were away from the main zone, yielded any kimberlite hits. Just a single two-metre intersection was encountered along the trend containing the series of dikes and blows that run through the two lakes, up to 12 kilometres to the northeast of Kennady Lake.

There was a bit of sparkle in that result however, as it extends the known length of the feature by another 700 metres. So far, the trend of kimberlites has been traced for about 1,500 metres.

There could be a concerted effort to delineate the series of kimberlites in the area over the next few years, and the most opportune time might come when the main Gahcho Kue project is being nudged though the permitting process. Dr. Vandersande said that he thought there would be a concerted effort to delineate the features in the future, but the current focus was adding to the resource base in a more immediate way.

With a bit of luck, such an addition could come later this year. De Beers and its partners have identified a narrow and sharp kimberlite indicator mineral train in the area roughly five kilometres to the northeast of Kennady Lake, and Dr. Vandersande said that the swath appears to have come from a pipe, not a dike.

There was a ground gravity target near the head of the train that was drilled by De Beers this spring, but the effort failed to produce a kimberlite hit. Nevertheless, there are strong indications that a kimberlite pipe may be in the immediate vicinity of that failure.

Dr. Vandersande said that there were no indicators found in the area farther to the east, which would apparently provide a limited area to conduct a new search. As a result, the partners are expected to go back this summer to check out the area surrounding the lake, looking for signs of a land-based pipe. As well, more drilling seems likely for next spring, as kimberlites often elude the first drilling attempts.

For instance, the first drill hole into the A-154 target at Diavik managed to hit the narrow area of granite between the two incredibly rich sister pipes. As a result, continued drilling in the area could still give the Gahcho Kue project a significant boost.

Mountain Province traded as high as $3 last fall and came close to that mark again in mid-February, but interest has been flagging of late, although things remain much rosier than last year, when a share could be had for 60 cents.

The stock closed eight cents higher on Thursday, at $1.83.

[dimonfind]

Goldcorp teams with Pele Mountain

6/23/2004




Articles in related categories
Gold & Silver




Less than two months after having De Beers pull out as a partner from the Festival diamond project near Wawa, Ont., Pele Mountain Resources (GEM-V) has found a suprising new partner not known for dabbling in diamonds: Goldcorp (G-T).
Pele has struck preliminary deals with Goldcorp on two of the junior's 100%-owned properties: Festival; and the Ardeen gold project situated 110 km west of Thunder Bay, just south of the Trans-Canada Highway.

At Festival, Goldcorp can earn a half interest by spending $2 million by the end of 2006. It can pick up an additional 10% by shelling out another $1 million before 2008.

De Beers had only been involved as a partner at Festival since July of last year, having been drawn to the Wawa area by its unusual near-surface, volcanic-hosted (i.e. non-kimberlitic) diamond deposits that hold some potential for cheap bulk-mining methods.

Pele reports that De Beers did have time to complete a review of the Festival property which "concluded that De Beers globally is not interested in the deposit type found to date within the Festival property."

De Beers' work confirmed that Festival's diamonds were derived from a peridotitic mantle within the diamond stability field at depths of at least 250 km, and are hosted within volcanic rocks that were deposited on the surface 2.7 billion years ago.

Futhermore, the deposits sampled and modelled by De Beers suggest a macro-diamond grade of 10 carats per hundred tonnes or less at a cut-off of 1.5 mm.

De Beers is still, for the moment, partnered with the other junior most actively looking for diamonds in the Wawa camp: Wayne O'Connor's Band-Ore Resources (BAN-T).

At Pele's Ardeen gold project, in similar terms, Goldcorp can earn a 50% interest by spending $3 million before 2008, and can get another 10% with a further $1.5-million expenditure before 2009.

Ardeen was northern Ontario's first gold mine, and it produced 30,000 oz. gold and 175,000 oz. silver during the early 1930s.

In recent years, Pele has completed more than 12,000 metres of diamond drilling on the property and outlined gold mineralization in zones near the mine's existing shaft, which was sunk to the 366-metre level.

Pele and Goldcorp expect to finalize the two option agreements by the end of July.

[dimonfind]

CHINA DIAMOND APPOINTS 3 TO THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
June 23, 2004

http://www.tacyltd.com/Research_Materials_Full.asp?id=53813

[NYBob]

I read an article about Diamonds in Canada
http://www.ivarkreuger.com/canadian_diamonds.htm

[avrcemonplst]

My last post was serious, though deleted. Anyway, bullish this whole sector.

[dimonfind]

Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. Reports Increased Diamond Valuations and Updates the Spring Exploration Program

Mountain Province Diamonds Inc., (the Company) is pleased to announce that it has been informed by its joint-venture partner DeBeers Canada Exploration Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of DeBeers Consolidated Mines Limited (De Beers), that De Beers has updated the modeled diamond values for the Hearne, 5034 and Tuzo diamond pipes. Values have increased from 18 percent (for 5034 and Tuzo) to 22 percent (for Hearne) from the January 2003 modeled values. Also, the Spring exploration program was completed in early-June 2004. Additional kimberlite has been discovered approximately 1300 m southwest of the Faraday kimberlite body along the dyke structure that runs from the northeast of the Faraday body to the southwest. The Hearne, 5034 and the Tuzo kimberlite bodies (the Gahcho Kue kimberlites) are located in Kennady Lake in the joint venture and #39;s AK mining leases situated in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The Faraday kimberlite is located approxim! ately 12 km northeast of Kennady Lake.

The diamonds recovered from the 1999, 2001 and 2002 bulk samples of the Hearne and 5034 pipes and the 1999 bulk sample of the Tuzo pipe (all to a 1.5 mm lower cutoff), were last valued at the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) using the January 2003 diamond prices. The modeled values per carat, based on those valuations and on production recovery factors as determined by De Beers, were reported on April 3, 2003. Since January 2003, diamond prices have risen due to strong demand and the DTC has increased their selling prices several times. The modeled values for the three pipes were adjusted recently using the March 2004 DTC diamond prices.

The table shows the weighted average modeled values per carat for the three pipes in January 2003 and March 2004.
January 2003 March 2004
Modeled Value Per Carat Modeled Value Per Carat
Name of Pipe (US $ pe! r Carat) (US $ per Carat)
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5034 62.70 74.20
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Hearne 50.00 61.00
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Tuzo 41.50 49.00
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The average modeled values per carat increased from 18% for the 5034 and Tuzo pipes to 22% for the Hearne pipe during the January 2003 to March 2004 time period.

On February 23, 2004 the Company announced that De Beers had started a large ground gravity survey extending from the northern part of Faraday Lake following the structural trend that runs from the NE to the SW through Faraday and Kelvin Lakes to the claim boundary. Kimberlite p! reviously intersected from approximately 160 m northeast to approximately 600 m southwest of the Faraday body are probably connected to the Faraday body with a kimberlite bearing dyke structure that pinches and swells. The purpose of this year and #39;s survey was to try to locate additional drill targets, specifically larger ones, which if kimberlite were found would significantly add to the resource size. The survey was completed and numerous ground gravity anomalies (drill targets), including a few larger ones, were identified. Only the few larger targets were drilled at this time.

A target drilled approximately 1300 m to the southwest of the Faraday body intersected 2.0 m of the kimberlite. This intersection thus extends the length of the kimberlite bearing dyke structure by approximately 700 m.

The drill program was not completed because of poor weather conditions. Analysis and refinement of drill targets is still ongoing. Also, De Beers will be re-exa! mining the drill data and associated ground gravity anomalies to make sure the targets were drilled in the optimum locations. Work is planned for this coming summer. Specifically, a ground gravity survey on land at the head of a very well-defined indicator mineral train, which appears to terminate in or near a small lake. A ground gravity anomaly in the lake was drilled this spring, but no kimberlite was intersected. Work will now focus on identifying an additional target (or targets) near the lake. There will also be ground gravity surveys in selected areas.

Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. is a diamond exploration and development company. The AK mining leases, located in the Northwest Territories of Canada are now held 44.1% by Mountain Province Diamonds Inc., 4.9% by Camphor Ventures (TSX-V:CFV), and 51% by De Beers Canada Exploration Inc. As reported in its news release on March 7th, 1997, Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. and its partner entered into a joi! nt agreement with De Beers Canada Exploration Inc. formerly known as Monopros Ltd. (a wholly owned subsidiary of De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited) under which De Beers Canada Exploration Inc. has the right to earn up to a 60% interest in the AK property by taking the project to commercial production. Carl G. Verley, P. Geol., a director, is the qualified person for the Company.

Jan W. Vandersande, Ph.D., President and amp; CEO

This release may contain forward-looking statements, within the meaning of the and quot;safe-harbor and quot; provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, regarding the Company and #39;s business or financial condition. Actual results could differ materially from those described in this news release as a result of numerous factors, some of which are outside of the control of the Company.

USA Office: 3633 E. Inland Empire Blvd., Suite 465, Ontario, CA 91764, [phone]

CANADA Office: 21 Nesbitt Drive, T! oronto, Ontario, Canada M4W 2G2

Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. Jan W. Vandersande, Ph.D. President and amp; CEO [phone] [phone] (FAX) Email: [e-mail] Website: www.mountainprovince.com

[dimonfind]

MOUNTAIN Province Diamonds Inc. Reports Increased Diamond ...
Business Wire (press release) - San Francisco,CA,USA
... is a diamond exploration and development company. The AK mining leases,
located in the Northwest Territories of ... CFV), and 51% by De Beers
Canada Exploration Inc ...
<http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040616005...

[dimonfind]

DE Beers Gets OK for Its First Canada Diamond Mine

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=reutersEdge&storyID=5314833
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GNWT SIGNS DE BEERS SNAP LAKE AGREEMENTS

<http://www.tacyltd.com/Research_Materials_Full.asp?id=53710>
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DU Plessis of De Beers Named Vice-President, Exploration at ...

http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=21544263&brk=1
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DE Beers Canada and Tahera Corporation to partner in Nunavut
Investor's Business Daily

<http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=21548532&brk=1>

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DE Beers Canada And Tahera Sign Exploration Deal

<http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullNews.asp?id=22636>
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MOUNTAIN Province Diamonds, Inc. Reports That De Beers Has ...

<http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040609005...
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SNAP Lake receives final permit
The Northern Miner - Sudbury,Ontario,Canada

<http://www.northernminer.com/issues/table_of_contents.asp?issue=06142004&sec=fe>
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SNAP Lake receives final permit
The Northern Miner - Sudbury,Ontario,Canada

<http://www.northernminer.com/issues/table_of_contents.asp?issue=06142004&sec=fe>
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DU PLESSIS OF DE BEERS NAMED VICE-PRESIDENT, EXPLORATION AT ...
Tacy Ltd.

<http://www.tacyltd.com/Research_Materials_Full.asp?id=53781>