[miningmx.com] — FORMER African Diamonds CEO James Campbell has been appointed the new CEO at Rockwell Diamonds (Rockwell) following the resignation of John Bristow, and will take over from the beginning of June.
Bristow resigned in December but remained as a consultant to the company until last month while his brother – Randgold Resources CEO Mark Bristow, who is a substantial shareholder – ran Rockwell in an acting capacity.
Campbell worked for De Beers for about 20 years before leaving to become MD of African Diamonds in 2006, where he set about developing a mine at the AK6 kimberlite project in Botswana.
African Diamonds was taken over by Lucara Diamond Corporation in December last year and Campbell agreed to join Lucara as vice-president for new business.
Campbell told Miningmx: “My main mission in life for the past few years has been to get AK6 into production, and it’s now well on the road to start production by the end of the year.
“Becoming a vice-president at Lucara after running African Diamonds was a step down, but I took the position because I felt it was important to demonstrate confidence in the new organisation to the shareholders in African Diamonds.
“But I am now ready for the next big challenge. I like the team at Rockwell and I can see significant upside there in terms of the current operations.’
Rockwell’s primary listing is on the TSX, where the shares have been stuck in a tight trading range around C$0.06 for most of the past 18 months. This compares with a high of around C$0.80, just ahead of the global financial crisis in 2008.
The shares have currently dipped to about C$0.045. This is not good news, given that Rockwell is about to embark on a fund-raising drive to raise around C$35m through a private placement.
Campbell said: “It’s very early days for me to talk about what needs to happen at Rockwell, but I think the share price has been drifting because the company has a history of not meeting its production targets.
“A number of steps have already been taken to deal with that, of which one of the most important has been the appointment of a chief operating officer.
“We need to demonstrate to the market that we can achieve our production targets and it’s very important that we bring the new Tirisano mine into production as planned.’
