FIRESTONE Diamonds, a London-listed company, produced 835,832 carats (cts) for its 2018 financial year, within guidance for the period, but said the incidence of high-value diamond recoveries had been lower than hoped at its Liqhobong Diamond Mine, an operation situated in Lesotho.
“As always, the average dollar per carat achieved is highly sensitive to the incidence of special stones of which we saw a lower incidence in this particular quarter,” said Paul Bosma, CEO of Firestone Diamonds in the firm’s production update in which the numbers benefited from an especially strong fourth quarter performance.
A total of 261,985cts were sold in the quarter compared to 217,380cts in the third quarter. Revenue totalled $18.6m which was higher than the $17.6m achieved in the third quarter but the average value of $71/ct was lower than the third quarter’s $81/ct “… mainly due to a larger proportion of run of mine diamonds and fewer valuable stones recovered,” Bosma said.
Said Bosma: “We continue to have grounds for optimism given the parts of the orebody we plan to exploit over the next 12 months.
“We recently completed a structural and geotechnical assessment of the pit and the outputs are now being used to rerun our life of mine plan. We look forward to updating the market in this respect during the first half of FY 2019,” he said
Firestone Diamonds’ net cash increased by $2.5m in the quarter to $27.8m.
