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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Tuesday was a so-so 66-79-165 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell five points to 751. Its stock has been halted since late 2023, when it tried a since aborted acquisition of a Guinean diamond miner, but Terry Tucker's Southstone Minerals Ltd. (SML: $0.01) is soldiering on at its Oena project in South Africa. The company began mining gems from alluvial gravel in a new area of the project in April and results so far are encouraging.

Southstone, which owns a 43-per-cent interest in Oena, says that the dig shifted from Oena Proper to the oft-touted Sandberg area. The company's diamonds have been averaging about 4.7 carats apiece since then, compared with an average of barely two carats at the Oena Proper zone. Size is an important driver in diamond value, so the company averaged $2,421 (U.S.) per carat at Sandberg, up from $826 (U.S.) per carat at Oena Proper.

And so, the revenue from the project has been perking up. During the company's second quarter, which ended in February, it sold 57 diamonds weighing 118.45 carats for $97,900 (U.S.) -- a yawner of a result that generated the "before" snapshot in support of Southstone's Sandberg cheerleading. In the third quarter, the operation sold 132 diamonds weighing 614.47 carats for a cheerier $919,000 (U.S.) -- averaging just shy of $1,500 (U.S.) per carat in what the company called a transitional quarter. (The transition was lopsided, as 97 per cent of the diamonds came from Sandberg.)

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