Irish firm extends Botswana diamond mining

Botswana Diamonds plc (AIM:BOD) today announces that, further to its announcement of 5 February 2013, the Memorandum of Understanding with the private South African company which granted Botswana Diamonds a three month exclusivity period to review the available data on a licence area has been extended until 14 June 2013.  The counterparty holds an 85 per cent interest in the thirteen licence block located to the southwest of the Orapa region of Botswana. 

The board of the Irish owned company is pleased with the results of the Company’s in-house evaluation. To confirm the findings Botswana Diamonds’ joint venture partner in the Orapa area is, at the Company’s request, applying its technology to the initial analyses. The joint venture partner expects to have results by the end of May 2013.

John Teeling, Chairman, commented: “We are very pleased that our partner, a private South African company, has extended the Memorandum of Understanding on the 13 licence blocks in the Gope region until mid-June. Our results so far are exciting but diamond exploration is high risk, so we have requested this extension to enable additional work be undertaken by the multinational partner working with us in Orapa. Our partner is using its unique technology to evaluate and corroborate our findings.”