Diamcor Mining, which is conducting trial mining exercises at its Krone-Endora at Venetia Project in South Africa, limited sales during the fiscal year ended March 31 to 3,181 carats of rough diamonds, generating revenue of $874,417, resulting in an average price of $275 per carat.
It said a net loss of about C$6.5 million was recorded for the year ended March 31, compared to C$762,308 a year earlier.
The increased loss was mainly attributable to forced reductions to processing volumes and operations due to the noted events during the fiscal year, inconsistent power supply due to Eskom load-shedding, and the ongoing industry inventory rebalancing efforts.
The company’s efforts focused mainly on planning and securing suitable funding during the period to allow it to proceed with its planned increases in trial mining volumes and additional bulk sampling over the greater areas of the project to support further growth in 2024 and for the long term.
Diamcor said the fiscal year proved extremely challenging for the diamond industry.
It said post-COVID-19 increases in the purchase of rough diamonds to meet consumer demand at that time were followed by a reduction in spending, which created a short-term supply chain imbalance, and excess inventories being held by many.
“Efforts to correct this imbalance and strengthen the industry moving forward were taken, which included temporary cancellations of tender and sales, reductions in the offerings made to Sightholders by De Beers, a decision by India to temporarily stop importing additional rough diamonds for cutting and polishing, as well as reductions in production levels by many,” it said.
Diamcor said it remains optimistic that these actions will result in the desired correction of the imbalance and, when combined with the continued reduction of global production levels, provide the potential for the recovery of prices and demand in the near term.
Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished
