Cleaning Diamonds from 15-Year Legal Row
July 20, 25
(IDEX Online) - The UK miner Vast Resources says it has been working with specialist consultants to develop new cleaning and sorting processes for a parcel of diamonds that were at the center of a 15-year legal dispute.
The company announced in May that it had finally taken possession of over 129,000 carats from Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields that had been held in state custody.
In a further update it says it has now made "positive progress … in the primary beneficiation process of preparing the diamond parcels for tendering."
Beneficiation means cleaning, separating, and sorting the rough diamonds to obtain a purer and more marketable product.
Marange diamonds typically have multiple layers of metallic silicates and mineral coatings, which makes them hard to assess.
Many gem-quality stones have, as a result, been misclassified as "industrial". But new processes reportedly reduce cleaning times from 30 hours per 1,000 carats to just 1 or 2 hours.
Vast surrendered gems in 2010 amid allegations it had exploited diamonds on mining claims previously owned by De Beers, which withdrew from Marange in 2006, saying it had failed to find viable reserves.
Vast Resources (then known as African Consolidated Resources) subsequently discovered massive alluvial diamond deposits there, which prompted the Zimbabwe government to revoke its mining licenses within months, and evict it.
In a statement Vast said: "The intention of the company is to be directly and indirectly involved in the entire value-chain where possible in order to maximise returns for shareholders, as this a unique opportunity to best capitalise on the long-awaited parcels from the historic settlement and could open further opportunities for the company in the future."
The company has shared example photos of approximately 500ct of 4-6ct mixed stones during the various stages of the primary beneficiation process.
Pic, courtesy Vast Resources shows diamonds after phase two primary beneficiation (second cleaning) and (inset) before primary beneficiation (first cleaning).