African Diamonds (LON:AFD) announced today it has undertaken a conditional placing of 24,146,500 ordinary shares at a price of 40p per share to raise approximately £9.6 million before expenses. The AIM and Botswana listed diamond exploration company with projects based in Botswana, Sierra Leone and Guinea announced today it will dedicate the proceeds of the placing to increase its share in the AK6 project. The company expect to increase their interest to 40%, to fund a earlier works undertaken by the company on the AK6 prospect, as well as for general capital and exploration. The early works programme includes orders for long-lead time capital equipment and mine site development. Exploration will be focused on African Diamonds' 100% owned AK8, AK9 and BK5 projects, all located in the vicinity of AK6 in Botswana, the report said. African Diamonds' directors and families will invest, in aggregate, GBP1 million in the placing. Following the placing, there will be 100,357,266 ordinary shares in issue. John Teeling, Chairman, commented:
"I am delighted by the support African Diamonds has received from a significant number of institutional investors. The funds raised will be used to increase our stake in the AK6 diamond project to 40%, to fund an early works programme on the mine, and to explore promising diamond targets on our Botswana acreage. As the final studies on AK6 are nearing completion, the fundamentals of the mine continue to improve. The mine is expected to come on stream in late 2011. During the struggle to commercialise the AK6 discovery, our top quality exploration ground was ignored. Targets such as AK8 and AK9 are known to shareholders, but we have other prospective kimberlites, in particular, BK5. We now have the time and money to focus on these targets. There are more diamond mines to be discovered in Botswana".
