Southstone Minerals Limited announced that Oryx Mining Ltd. has commenced diamond mining operations at Oena Diamond Mine, South Africa. Oena will be operated 23 hours a day, 6 days a week with total head feed capacity of 200 tonnes per hour to a desanding screen which feeds to an 18-foot pan plant. Concentrate produced from the pan plant will be transferred securely to a high security processing facility where diamonds will be recovered using BVX technology.

Diamonds will be sold monthly at a designated tender facility. Oena consists of an 8,800-hectare mining right located along the Orange River. Mining operations will commence at Blokwerf Section with subsequent expansion to the Sandberg Section.

SinceNovember 2018, Southstone has bulk sampled an estimated 638,690 tonnes from Sandberg recovering 2,681 carats (cts) (1,155 diamonds) with an average stone size of 2.32 cts and has bulk sampled an estimated 202,760 tonnes from Blokwerf recovering 550 cts (307 diamonds) with an average stone size of 1.79 cts. Importantly, Sandberg mined tonnes to date comprise only 30% of the total tonnes mined at Oena by Southstone since 2015, yet Sandberg has produced more than 50% of the diamonds over 10 ct and valued >USD 5,000 per ct. Table 1 lists some of the exceptional diamonds that have been recovered from both Sandberg and Blokwerf Sections over 10 ct and Table 3 provides images of a select number of diamonds.

The average run of mine diamond sale price to from July 2015 to April 2022 is USD 1,612 per ct.