Shore Gold formalizes name change to Star Diamond Corp.
Five months after its shareholders voted in favour of a name change, the Saskatoon-based diamond exploration and development company Shore Gold says it will begin trading as Star Diamond Corp. next week.
“This new corporate name is in honour of the Star Kimberlite, located in the Fort à la Corne forest of Saskatchewan, Canada,” Shore Gold President and CEO Ken MacNeill said in a statement issued Thursday on behalf of the company’s board.
“It was the exploration and evaluation work completed on the Star Kimberlite that demonstrated the significant quality, size and value of the contained diamond populations.”
Shore Gold shareholders in September voted on a resolution to change the name “to Shore Diamond Corporation or such other name as the board … may resolve and as may be acceptable to the applicable regulatory authorities.”
Shore Gold has been working to build a diamond mine in the forest east of Prince Albert since 1995. The company received federal environmental approval for the project in 2014; it is still waiting for the provincial government to green-light the mine.
In a 2011 study, Shore Gold estimated the massive open-pit mine project would cost $2.5 billion, but its executives hope a deal signed last year with a Rio Tinto Group subsidiary will reduce that figure.
The option agreement is worth up to $75 million over seven years, and could result in the global mining giant owning a 60 per cent stake in the company’s StarOrion South diamond project if it chooses to complete the exploration program.
The name change vote took place at the firm’s last annual general meeting in September, during which the activist SGF Shareholders Association Inc.’s attempt to replace some of its directors was decisively defeated.
“I think the source of frustration for many of our shareholders in the past has been the slow pace of finding a solution to move the project forward,” Shore Gold chairman Brian Menell said at the time.
“We’ve now found a solution to move the project forward.”
Shore Gold will begin trading as Star Diamond Corp., with the stock ticker symbol DIAM, on Monday.