An Appreciating Diamond Stock

Of all the junior mining stocks there are not a lot of diamond miners. Exploring for diamonds was a big deal about 20 years during the Diamet and Diavik days in the NWT. Today you hear and read very little about diamonds. There are however a few diamond stories out there that are well worth noting. One of those diamond stories is Lucara diamonds LUC. Lucara works in Africa where it has two key assets which are the Karowe mine in Botswana and the Mothae project in Lesotho. The 100% owned Karowe Mine is a newly constructed state-of-the-art mine which was fully commissioned in Q2 2012 . At the 75% owned Mothae project the company has completed the trial mining stage and is working towards completing a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA). Both Mothae and Karowe are large scale assets with tonnage and throughput upside and production has consistently included large, Type IIA stones.

A quick look at the chart will tell you the story of how Lucara is doing stock wise. With a 52 week trading range of 75 cent low to a $2.80 high, there has baeen some very nice gains in this play. Most small juniors with a diamond portfolio are explorers. Going beyond exploration, Lucara is a producer and that what sets this miner apart from most.

The producing mine, which is the Karowe Mine is a hard rock open pit operation and has probable reserves to a depth of 324 m of 33.1 mt containing 5.1 million carats. Indicated resources from surface to a depth of 400 m of 48.07 mt containing 7.61 million carats. Inferred resource from 400 m to 750 m of 21 mt containing 3.04 million carats.

The second operation, the Mothae Project is in Lesotho. Although it is on care and maintainance at the moment it also is an open pit operation. Indicated resource of 2.39 mt @ 3.0 cpht containing 0.07 million carats and inferred resource of 36.57 mt @ 2.7 cpht containing 1.0 million carats.

Fully diluted, there are 381 million shares.

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GAdams