Firestone seeks BSE listing

| Tuesday March 16, 2010 00:00

The secondary listing application would be made shortly, and listing was anticipated to take place in the second quarter of the year.

Firestone Diamonds CEO Phillip Kenny said that the company had made a substantial investment in its Botswana operations, which were now the primary focus for the company.

The diamond-mining and exploration company had appointed Capital Securities of Botswana as its sponsoring broker for the proposed listing.

With most of Firestone's current operations now focused on Botswana and production due to start at the company's BK11 kimberlite in the second quarter of 2010, the company had been granted local asset status by the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority of Botswana.

Kenny said that the ability of Botswana-based institutional investors to invest in BSE-listed companies was significantly improved by the granting of the local asset status. 'With BK11 due to commence production shortly, and more than 100 kimberlites in our licence areas in the Orapa, Jwaneng and Tsabong regions, we believe that we have a successful future ahead of us in Botswana and look forward to growing our shareholder base in Botswana,' he concluded.

The required development costs would be financed from the company's existing cash resources.

Firestone had entered into an agreement with its Botswana partners at BK11 to finance their share of mine development costs, in return for which the company's interest in the project would be increased from 80 percent to 90 percent.

The company had undertaken significant resource delineation work on BK11. This work had resulted in the definition of a resource of 12-million tons, containing an estimated 800 000 ct to a depth of 120 m. About six-mil- lion tons of this resource was in the KW area with an average grade of 10 cpht, of which about 2,3-million tons was in the indicated resource category.

Additional work would be undertaken to convert the entire KW resource to the indicated category as mining progressed.

The company believed that actual mining grades had the potential to increase significantly through the use of selective mining and the presence of higher-grade zones, expected at depth.

An additional inferred resource of six-million tons of kimberlite containing about 200 000 ct had been identified between 120 m and 250 m.

Limited sampling had been carried out on this part of the resource, and further work would be undertaken as mining progressed.-(Miningweekly)