Diamond & Jewelry News, Advice and Prices for Consumers
Diamond & Jewelry News, Advice and Prices for Consumers
August 18, 2010
I heard that West African Diamonds is about to close a deal with some investors and local diamond mining companies, becoming one of the main forces in diamond mining in Africa. What is exactly the details of this deal? How much of the new company's stock would the current management maintain and where would it conduct it work. I know that West African Diamonds has mined diamonds mostly in Guinea and Sierra Leone, would its projects expand to new land?
August 23, 2010
I read last week that "West African Diamonds" has informed that the merging with Stellar, a well known diamond production company is developing rapidly and the launching of the new mega company is expected to take place in Feb 2010. A spokesman of West African Diamonds has said that that the merging would allow establishing a bigger diamond production company, which could obtain a big budget and run modern Kimberlite projects. The new company will own two of Guinea's prosperous diamond mines: Mandela and Bomboko, which together, if I understood correctly, supplies 1.5 million carat of rough diamonds annually. Future projects include a Kimberlite diamond mining project in Droujba (in Guinea as well) and a corporation with the Petra diamond company in Sierra Leone.
August 19, 2010
West African Diamonds (WAD) is indeed about to grow fro a 3+ million euro company to a 16+ million euro one, obviously reducing the relative power of the current government, which is expected to drop to 25%. I don't know who are the investors or other companies with which WAD is merging, but it seems that WAD will remain a main decision making force in the new corporation when it comes to diamond production, with the new investors responsible for deciding upon the corporation's more general direction.
I read that the current annual diamond yield of WAD is expected to grow X4 due to this merging. WAD suffered quite severely from the recession in the diamond industry, but even before, it didn't quite succeed in maximizing the mining and its diamond production profits and has wanted to expand in order build a new, hopefully more successful company's construction.
As far as I know, current plans don't include expanding its mining territory to additional African countries, but rather maximizing profits by expanding projects within Sierra Leone and Guinea, by perhaps attracting additional investors or finding local mining companies which WAD could acquire. One of the main diamond mines which WAD currently has hold on is the Bomboko diamond mine in Guinea, which WAD have established in the last spring. This mine is producing an impressive yield of rough diamonds, with a large proportion of them being gem quality diamonds, and WAD hopes many more diamonds could be unearthed there in future years.
