Rockwell’s Tirisano mine set for steady state production

ROCKWELL Diamonds plans to bring its Tirisano mine into steady state production by the middle of this year, after reporting a financial year that reflected the tough decisions taken to turn around the company’s assets.

CEO James Campbell said on Friday there had been a clean-up of the Toronto- and Johannesburg-listed company’s assets, legacy issues and operational constraints, and efforts to raise production and ramp up Tirisano, which it bought during the financial year ended February.

The effects of this work were evident in the results. Rockwell posted a loss of C$13,7m compared with a loss of C$5m a year earlier, with an impairment of its assets by C$4,9m after an asset review, a C$1,5m payment to resolve a legal dispute and C$6,7m to ramp up output at Tirisano, near Ventersdorp.

Rockwell has set a target of 10 000 carats a month of highquality diamonds in the next five years. By the end of the financial year, it had C$9,9m to spend on growing its business. It does not need to return to the market, Mr Campbell said.

“Investments undertaken and operating changes made allow Rockwell to deliver further improvements and pursue growth opportunities in fiscal 2013,” he said.

The next phase was to leverage the company’s production profile by focusing on developing its asset inventory and on selected merg- ers and acquisitions, he said.

During the year the empowerment deal with African Vanguard Resources was unwound, and the Jasper property neighbouring Rockwell’s flagship Saxendrift mine was acquired. The property will extend the life of the mine.

A key concern was extracting the best value at Tirisano, which had been built by gold miners.

“It was not in tune with diamond value management strategies or the production targets the company had set. Slowly, over the course of the past year, we’ve been able to rebuild this mine,” Mr Campbell said.

The mine should reach full production next month, he said.