European Diamonds Plc (EPD: AIM) is a diamond exploration and development company with advanced projects in Finland and Lesotho.

In Finland, the company has explored a large part of the prospective Karelian Craton and identifed a number of kimberlite indicator trains. Kimberlites have been discovered in one of these areas and exploration continues in the others. Evaluation work on the promising Lahtojoki Pipe has begun with a 5,000 tonne bulk sample due to be collected before Easter 2005.

In Lesotho, European Diamonds holds a 25 year mining license to develop the Liqhobong diamondiferous kimberlites. The Liqhobong Project provides for the commencement of mining at 290,000 carats per annum from the end of 2004 from the Satellite Pipe and the evaluation of the adjacent large Main Pipe and start of a Feasibility Study in 2005.

European Diamonds will become a mid-tier diamond producer in 2005 and intends to grow through acquisition and in-house exploration. The experienced management and technical team of European Diamonds have a strong track record of discovery and a history of wealth creation for shareholders.



The Kingdom of Lesotho gained its independence from the UK in 1966 and is the only constitutional monarchy on the African continent. The country is a small, densely populated mountainous country situated in the east of the Republic of South Africa, which entirely encircles the country.

Diamonds in Lesotho
The country has long been known as a source of large, high quality diamonds, mostly from alluvial deposits. To date most of the country's diamond production has been derived from the Letseng-la-Terai deposit which was mined by De Beers between 1977-1981. Letseng has recently returned into production and is again producing high quality gems albeit on a modest scale. Apart from Letseng, the only other known significantly mineralised kimberlites in the country are the Liqhobong suite and the nearby lower grade Kao pipe all located about 40 kilometres west of Letseng also high in the Maluti mountains.





Finland project.

Project Highlights
Work undertaken by European Diamonds and the Geological Survey of Finland has proven that the Achaean-aged Karelian Craton is highly prospective for hard-rock diamond deposits.
European Diamonds currently have seven regional exploration projects in eastern and central Finland in addition to the Lathojoki project currently under evaluation.
The Company has recovered high quality kimberlite indicator minerals from all of the exploration projects and will continue with the field exploration of these areas in 2005.
Work on the Lentiira Project in central eastern Finland has identified a large kimberlite complex covering an area of some 160 square kilometres. Although the Company has recovered high quality indicator minerals and diamonds from the project area, to date only linear kimberlite dykes have been discovered.
None of the sampled dykes has proved to be the source of the highest quality indicators emanating from the highly prospective 'Railway' indicator train. Further assessment of this project will continue throughout 2005.





Corporate website : http://www.europeandiamondsplc.com/s/Home.asp

Shareholder info : http://www.europeandiamondsplc.com/s/InformationRequest.asp

The AGM is on the 8th December .............. in ST.Albans!

Why on earth is it there, and in the morning too!

I guess they are trying to discourage as many potential attendees as possible!


Annual General Meeting


The Annual General Meeting will be held at the Cedar Room, St Michael's Manor,
Fishpool Street, St Albans, Herts AL3 4RY on Thursday, 8 December 2005 at 11.00
am.

Andy
According to Anom, their new Head Office is in St Albans

takahe,

I know, but why hold the AGM there?

MOST AGM's are in the city, probably due to the fact that all the brokers and analysts are resident there, so IMO it's extremely odd to hold an AGM in St. Albans.

I now it's not unheard of, there are of course other AGM's held outside the city, (EG TDM) but IMO if you want the people that count there, you have it where they prefer.

Portman Building Society moved their AGM from London to Bournemouth, and start it at 10:30 am, to lessen the number of attendees, fact!

Andy - at least they aren't wasting overhead expenditure - no travel, no room hire, less refreshments in St Albans. It really isn't so far to go, if you are a serious shareholder, by train from Kings X Thameslink. Nice day out to the ancient Roman city of Verulanium.

sd

stockdog,

I agree it's not far, but it takes time to travel there, and maybe for that reason alone these things are usually in the city, where the analysts and brokers are.

A business room hired for a couple of hours is relatively cheap, and a lot of AGM's only provide coffee anyway, so it can be done in the city very modestly.

Some brokers will provide a room, Starvest held theirs in the offices of Grant Thornton recently for example.

Why not have the AGM on video link for the city analysts & brokers ?

Here's the interesting bits from the phone call to EPD.

Firstly the RNSs. EPD have been generating releases that they consider (and we would as well) to be very upbeat about their prospects. The unfortunate thing is that the releases are being 'doctored' before they are put out on RNS. The nomad, broker or PR company are altering the text. The reason for this editing is apparently so that they conform to the standard required of RNSs.

The management have been as concerned as you, that the share price has not been moving at this news. Indeed, they've spoken with other mining engineers from the industry, who've been astonished at the achievements of EPD (under budget, difficult terrain, high quality set up and very large extraction capacity) and these engineers can't understand why the share price hasn't taken off either. So it does appear that the general downturn in the mining sector has been holding back some of the shares that should by all rights have gone ballistic.

To rectify the problem of the RNSs, as EPD can not change the Exchange rules, they are going to put out news releases to the wire services simultaneously as the RNS go out. The news releases will have all the data that the RNS misses out on. So it maybe a lot better to read the AFX or wire service report, after you've read the RNS.

Additionally, they are conscious of the need for more graphics. The engineers have been out with the cameras, taking numerous pictures of the site at work. Some have even taken MPEGs as I mentioned earlier. The company is planning to edit these together and put them out as a release or make them available on the website.

I was told a while back that new pictures were on the way, including some of the diamonds, the company has been holding some of these back for the Annual Report. Obviously I've pointed out that they would do better by releasing as much as they can in the meanwhile, so that the market can see what they are getting up to. So here you are...... new pictures from Liqhobong as on the EPD website.

Having a Blast at Satellite!

The mining engineers are having a lot of fun testing the various parts of Satellite. They are trying to find the area that yields the most diamonds in any one processing load as any new producer would. Satellite is nearly 100 metres in diameter, so there's a great deal of ground from which to chose the ore. IMO they are doing their level best to maximise the production.

Of course, as the company said before, they are still on single shift for the next month or so, so the plant is only operating for 8 hours a day but they do plan to step this up to the double shift as RNS'd. So any rumours that the company is not extracting what they said they would are unfounded. Everything is running according to the previously announced RNSs.

As a follow up to the posts I made about Kao, I asked if they had heard anything about their neighbours. The news is that apart from two security guards, nobody has been seen at the Kao kimberlite for nearly three weeks. The place looks deserted. There are rumours that the fees are due to be paid to renew the licenses soon. If they don't come up with the money, then Lesotho Diamond Corporation plc might lose control of their concession. This would leave a 20 hectare kimberlite up for grabs and you can tell who would be in a prime position to benefit.

The DMS plant in operation

EPD do have spare capacity at the Satellite plant. They are planning to only work two shifts of 8 hours = 16 hours per day. So there would be 8 hours spare for other processing. This would give economies of scale, if the plant were processing a bulk sample for elsewhere - such as Main............or even Kao! The upshot is that this may be an option that would be too sweet to pass on if it presents itself.

The Tailings Dam Wall under construction

The company is going to be at Indaba next year and will be showing off their wares to the industry. I guess that they will be one of the highlights of the show, along with FDI/DB and Petra/BHP and a few others. I doubt that there will be the same sort of visits as were arranged last year, but there maybe a few execs that might take a trip into the Highlands.

EPD are now established at St.Albans. They have moved office as I said they had last week. The carpets are in, the phones are in, the computers are connected and all they need are curtains! The website has been updated and you can note the new telephone numbers. Kerry said that they have to bring in their own tea and coffee for the moment! but things are progressing. They are planning to give everyone that comes to the AGM a great presentation. It may be a bit out of the way to come to St.Albans, but it's only 40 minutes by train and a 8 minute taxi ride. You won't be disappointed as they can fill you in on all the news and explain what they've done.

The management are as disappointed as you that the share price continues to squat at 20p when it should be closer to 70p or even 100p, but they are doing what they can to make this happen. You should be comforted by the fact that they are aware that if the company does make a huge splash by making a massive sale, then people will sit up and take notice of them.

De Beers did another massive sale of rough last week and flooded the market once again before Christmas. The word around the industry is that DB are trying to accumulate as much cash as they can for some reason. Only the board of DB know why for the moment, but it may have something to do with South African politics and the tax.

On the tax point, they are also uncertain about what the RSA will do about the tax re the sales on the Johannesburg bourse. So it might be that very few of the EPD parcels go there. They have completed their first tender and I'll write what I can here, but I've asked the management to write a more detailed explanation of the process. As usual, EPD have not passed anything about that would be considered price sensitive. So no I don't know how they got on. EPD are also aware that they need to explain the tender process to you, so that the shareholders can understand the figures.

The parcels are being made ready at Liqhobong, a GOL official prepares and Kimberley certifies them on-site. They are then taken with the presence of high security to Maseru, the Lesotho capital. From there, they catch a flight to JoBurg and a connecting flight onwards to Europe. As the goods are bonded into customs in Lesotho, there should not be any problem with the RSA export tax, even though they pass through RSA territory on the way. Of course any parcels that are sold in JoBurg, would be subject of the tax, but DB is doing their best to fight the tax on behalf of the industry.

Liqhobong Diamonds

Once in JoBurg and at the Bourse, the parcels are taken to cubicles within a large room. The walls of the cubicles have large two way mirrors, so the security guards outside can watch as the people inspecting the parcels open them and examine the rough. Anyone tendering has to give their name, company, address details etc and then can make a bid on the parcels they have inspected. This way, the company gets a mass of marketing data on the people who are most interested in the EPD produce.

This means that certain companies might be invited to tender for special parcels, if they are regular buyers. There is a healthy interest in yellow stones at the moment. Epd does have pictures of all this and I reckon they will explain better when they can. Obviously they will release the news on the sales as soon as everything is concluded.

One point that is notable though, is that they don't expect to sell everything out of an entire sight. Apparently the process is to parcel the diamonds of equal size into separate packets. So there might be a parcel of 1 carat stones, another of 50 point stones, another of 25 point etc. They may not sell all of these parcels at one sight. So if they took 3,000 carats to JoBurg, they might not sell all 3,000, but most of it. The rest would go back into the EPD stockpile for another day.

On the other hand, the prices may be better for some stones than others, or even worse than expected. It all depends on the market prices at the time. Because of the large De Beers sales, the prices are still relatively depressed. The polishers and retailers have been flooded with merchandise and they are quite short on cash. You may have seen reference to this on Diamond.net

Liqhobong diamonds

Liqhobong is apparently producing some beautiful octahedral stones. I'm sure that the more savvy amongst you realise what this means. It means that each rough when cut can yield a much larger finished diamond. Less waste means higher price. Of course the lower end goods or indian produce can be wasteful if the crystals are the wrong shape. You might only get a gemstone at 40% of the carat weight of the rough. But Liqhobong does seem to produce some nice octahedral product as you can see in the photos, so the prices might be better, or might not. It all depends on the market. But one thing is certain, the colour of the Liqhobong stones is certainly what the market is after at the moment. So we can expect to get a lot of visitors to the sights.

So that's all she wrote for the moment. If I can think of anything else we discussed, I'll put it in another post. But we will get larger and better explanations from EPD in wire releases AFTER each RNS. So keep watching in case one comes out.

The Liqhobong Site

By the way - ALL these pictures were from Liqhobong!

Anom,

I have been studying this picture, what size would you say the large one on the middle is?

>Andy

I reckon that's a 6 carat. You can see striations along some of the crystal faces and those are also seen on larger stones. If that is the case, this single stone alone could be worth upwards of $12,000, based on GIA Z or Fancy colour, vivid yellow.

Well if that's a 6 carat, the four around it look a decent size too, in fact the whole parcel looks quite nice.

If, as the picture suggests, thay have found some large stones, EPD may realise more than anticipated for the initial batch sale.

Released at 7am this morning:-

European Diamonds PLC
28 November 2005

EUROPEAN DIAMONDS PLC RNS

RESULTS OF 1ST DIAMOND SALE

28 November 2005: AIM-quoted European Diamonds is pleased to announce that the
first sale of Liqhobong diamonds from its new Satellite Pipe Mine in Lesotho,
Southern Africa, realised a total of US$76,372 - over 25% more than expected.
The diamonds taken to tender consisted of stones recovered from the mine
overburden and previous exploration activities on site and as such were not
representative of 'Run-of-Mine' production.

In view of the seasonally soft market, weakened further following recent heavy
diamond sales by De Beers, European Diamonds took to sale only lower value
stones.

During the sale, at the South African Diamond Bourse in Johannesburg, the
company sold a total of 2,722 carats of diamonds to several international
diamantaires for an average price of US$28.05 per carat.

A number of high quality fancy yellow stones of up to 7 carats in weight, with
reserve prices of between US$850 and US$7,500 per carat, were held back and will
be taken to Antwerp in a major sale planned for the New Year.

European Diamonds Chief Executive Roy Spencer said: 'As expected, the Liqhobong
goods at the tender attracted significant interest from international buyers and
were very well received despite the soft market conditions. The values received
for these lower quality goods from Liqhobong were 26% above our anticipated
tender prices and as such we are very encouraged by the outcome of the sale.'

Mr Spencer added: 'We are now looking forward to the New Year sale and achieving
full-scale production.'

In line with seasonal trends, diamond prices are expected to continue to
strengthen in January.


For further information, please contact:


Kerry Spencer, European Diamonds +44 (0) 1727 852 417
+44 (0) 7739 827 231
Sarah Samworth, First City Financial Public Relations +44 (0) 20 7436 7486
+44 (0) 7977 276 023


This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

Joe,

Yet more dilution, another placing, @ 20p, plus 30p warrants (24 months)

I knew the placing was coming, and I have to express my surprise at them getting it away at 20p, although I don't think they filled it, it's lower than i thought, and a rather odd amount of shares and money.



European Diamonds PLC
04 January 2006


EUROPEAN DIAMONDS PLC
(the 'Company')

ANNOUNCEMENT

4 January 2006

Private Placement Financing

The Company announces that it has raised 614,300 by way of a private placement
of 3,071,500 new ordinary shares at 20p per share and has received the
subscription monies. In connection with this private placement, the Company will
also issue 3,071,500 share subscription warrants, subject to shareholder
approval at an Extraordinary General Meeting which is to be convened in the near
future. The warrants will be exercisable at 30p per share and will be valid for
twenty four months.

The funds raised through the private placement will be used for the Company's
working capital.

Application has been made for these shares to be admitted to AIM and it is
expected that they will be admitted on 9 January 2006. Following the
subscription, the Company has in issue 57,066,283 ordinary shares.

The Company owns diamond interests in Lesotho and Finland. Its principle project
is currently the Liqhobong Satellite Mine in Lesotho which has commenced
processing primary kimberlite. First diamond sales were held in November 2005
and the next sale is expected in January 2006.

The Company also has diamond exploration projects in Finland, principally at
Lahtojoki, Lentiira and Area 3. The positive results from sampling confirm the
prospectivity of the Finnish part of the Karelian craton.

European Diamonds PLC is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of
the London Stock Exchange and its shares trade under the symbol EPD.

For further information please contact:

Roy Spencer, Chief Executive or James Cable, Finance Director and Company
Secretary
European Diamonds PLC
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7529 7502
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7491 2244
e-mail:

enquiries@europeandiamondsplc.com

website:

www.europeandiamondsplc.com



This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

Well the trick of releasing the bad news just as the market is closing seems to have worked here!

I have to admit I'm surprised.

Clearly this is an odd amount and an odd figure to raise, and the inclusion of warrnants suggests they struggled to raise the cash, so another placing may follow IMO.

If the promised sale of diamonds at the end Of January is less than expected, this will then drop IMO.

Strange, expected to see a bit of a sell-off after fundraising but seemed to have quite a few nibblers today.

dibbles,

I'm amazed to be honest,even more so that they got this away at 20p!

I would love to have attended those presentations!

Things looking brighter now after this weeks newsflow.
Strange how quickly nerves can be eased and sentiment changed in this game.

dibbles,

I am waiting until the next diamond sale is completed before coming to any firm conclusions.

I will be looking at the quantity sold, carat price achieved, and a new estimate of how many carat per month they plan to mine this year.

Another consideration is how long it took to complete whatever parcel size they do sell, and whether they have overcome the problems that they are encountering.

I feel there will be a softening all round.

Andy, I agree with you to a point but it seems to me that the 20p range held up well in less certain times so any reasonable production figures make a mockery of the 10m mkt cap, but we shall see.

As I said its a funny old game but I was quite impressed with the volume traded since the production update, at least we know EPD have been noticed.

Dibbles,


Nice rise (16%) this morning!

No RNS, so maybe someone thinks the next diamond sale is closer then we think?

Morning Andy,

Looking positive, I wonder if RAB are picking up more?
I see a 200k buy went through earlier which is bigger on it's own than EPD's usual daily average.