Star Diamond intends to add new claims to its ongoing litigation against Rio Tinto Canada

Star Diamond said last Thursday it intends to add new claims to its ongoing litigation against Rio Tinto Canada after completing an internal study proving that Rio Tinto Canada’s diamond recovery methodologies lead to undue diamond breakage, resulting in significant unnecessary cost overruns and materially damaging Star Diamond’s interest in the Star-Orion South Diamond Project.
“The Study reinforces Star Diamond’s belief that Rio Tinto Canada’s extraction and diamond recovery methodologies, including its unprecedented use of unproven civil engineering trenching technologies to conduct bulk sampling of Kimberlite, is causing undue diamond breakage, resulting in significant unnecessary cost overruns and materially damaging Star Diamond’s interest in the Star-Orion South Diamond Project,” Star Diamond said in its statement for the press.
“Comprehensive diamond breakage studies are required to assess the full nature, extent and potential causes of the undue diamond breakage that appears to be occurring under Rio Tinto Canada’s processes, and to assess whether larger diamonds would have been recovered in the absence of such breakage,” the statement said.  
Star Diamond has advised Rio Tinto Canada that Star Diamond will be amending its Statement of Claim in the litigation it previously commenced against Rio Tinto Canada in the Province of Saskatchewan, to include additional claims related to diamond breakage and Rio Tinto Canada’s use of unproven methodologies without adequate advance testing.  Star Diamond continues to actively pursue that litigation, and is committed to taking all actions necessary to protect Star Diamond and its shareholders from the practices and conduct of Rio Tinto Canada identified in the Claim, including if necessary by seeking to remove Rio Tinto Canada from the Project.