Botswana Diamonds, which was incorporated last September to acquire certain assets and interests demerged from African Diamonds as part of its acquisition by Lucara Diamond is set to join London’s AIM on February 1.
A listing on the Botswana Stock Exchange was also planned, but officials from the bourse said that they had not received a listing application as of yet.
“They have not notified us yet, I guess [if] they have communicated with the bourse they will have a primary listing. They are only going to have a secondary listing here," a BSE official said.
Market analysts, however, said that they expected an introduction price of 7p a share, therefore putting Botswana Diamonds’ value at just over £7million ($11,1 million) with no new money being raised.
Lucara Diamond had offered 0.8 of one of its shares plus one share in Botswana Diamonds for each African Diamonds share at the end of 2010.
This put African Diamonds’ value at just over £51million ($81 million), including the £7m accounted for by Botswana Diamonds.
Lucara was interested in the AK6 diamond mine, an advanced, high-value diamond development project located in the Orapa/Letlhakane kimberlite district of Botswana and all of African Diamonds other assets went into Botswana Diamonds.
Botswana Diamonds holds exploration licences in Botswana, a 35.42 percent stake in a company with exploration interests in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a small shareholding in AIM-quoted Stellar Diamonds and around $2million in cash.
There were also plans to invest in Zimbabwe and Cameroon.
Here is a brief look at Botswana Diamonds’ assets, which were formally under African Diamonds:
Botswana Diamonds will own three exploration licences, which are AK8, AK9 and BK5 kimberlites in Botswana.
All three contained diamonds.
AK8 Kimberlite
AK8 was situated approximately 10 km from AK6 and 10km away from Debswana's Orapa Mine. It is a two lobe, 5 hectare kimberlite.
The pipe was estimated to contain 20M tonnes of kimberlite to a depth of 300 m. The diamond grade was estimated to be between 5-10 carats per hundred tonnes (cpht).
There was also insufficient data to make an estimate of the diamond value. The last assessment of AK8 suggested that there could be filtering of the earlier drill grades. There may be an economic opportunity on the kimberlite lobe outcropping on the surface.
AK9 Kimberlite
AK9 was a 3 hectare kimberlite pipe, also situated 10km away from AK6. The pipe was estimated to contain 11M tonnes to a depth of 250m. The diamond grade was estimated to be between 5-10cpht with upside potential.
There was insufficient data to make an estimate of the diamond value. As with AK8, a re-assessment of the kimberlite suggests that there could be filtering of the drill grades and so higher grades are possible. There is a potential economic opportunity with the portion of the kimberlite outcropping on the surface.
BK5 Kimberlite
BK5 had a surface extent of 2.7 hectares but past work suggested the anomaly was at least seven hectares in size. Much of the kimberlite was at surface and historical records suggest a grade of around seven cpht.
Prospecting licenses
Botswana Diamonds will have prospecting licenses on 33 out of 70 known kimberlites, covering 1,852km2 in the Orapa region.
It also had prospecting licenses covering 3,481km2 in the Kedia region of Botswana (120-km West of Orapa)
DRC
Botswana Diamonds will own 35.42 percent of Bugeco SA, a private Belgian company whose DRC subsidiary owns exploration licenses in the African country.
Bugeco was focused on five licenses in which the kimberlites were located in Kasai Oriental.
Two high interest kimberlite clusters had been discovered: 9 kimberlite pipes (>35Ha in total size).
An existence of micro and macro diamonds was also noted and plans to conduct a bulk sampling for macro diamonds were in the offing.
Zimbabwe
African Diamonds (now Botswana Diamonds) indicated last year during the Botswana Resource Conference its willingness to acquire mining claims in Marange.
Mathew Nyaungwa, Rough&Polished, from Namibia
