NJR ZA	Enlarge
Diamond mine in Africa

The London-listed diamond company Stellar announced that it raised the equivalent of $3.22 million, before taking expenses into account, through a conditional placing of millions of its shares, Diamond News reported. The almost-67-million placed shares will amount to about 23.6% ownership of the company.

 

Stellar's conditional placing is meant to raise funds to promote its West African diamond mining projects, Droujba and Tongo, thought thus far to contain approximately 3.1 million carats of diamonds in total. Stellar believes that further exploration could potentially turn up even greater caches of diamonds.

 

Stellar chief executive Karl Smithson acknowledged great satisfaction with the sale of the placed shares and committed the company to conduct bulk sampling and further drilling at the Droujba and Tongo sites.

 

The Droujba project is located in Guinea and the Tongo site is located in Sierra Leone, with whom Stellar is negotiation a license dispute.