It’s been a rocky three years for Pnina Feldman’s Diamond Rose mining company.
After a glittering launch at the Australian Stock Exchange which saw the company’s 20-cent shares rocket to $1.75, investor confidence evaporated, shares slumped to less than half the original price and the company name has been dragged into share-rigging allegations currently before the courts.
But the discovery of four possibly diamond-rich kimberlite pipes at its Upper Beta Creek project in the North Kimberley region of Western Australia has seen the share price recovering to trade at a six-month high of 17.5 cents, raising the possibility of Rebbetzin Feldman realizing her dream of becoming a major gemstone producer, and thereby spelling the end of Yeshiva College’s perennial cash-flow problems.
“You can say mazal tov when you’re pregnant, you can say mazal tov at the first ultra-sound, at the birth, and again at the bris,” Rebbetzin Feldman told the Australian Jewish News. “Every one of these phrases is a source of joy and excitement. We’re at the stage where we’re well and truly pregnant.
Like any pregnancy, however, the result is by no means certain, but it is full of promise. “I hope Hashem didn’t bring me to this point just to let me down again; He wouldn’t be so mean, surely! We have been trough a lot of ups and downs and I would have liked to get there earlier, but I’m not complaining.”
The first item of good news came three weeks ago with the announcement that a kimberlite pipe source – the type of rock which “hosts” diamonds – had been found on analysing 13 samples extracted from the company’s 546 square kilometers of tenements. Then last week, three of another 12 samples came up trumps – and there are another 54 samples to be analysed in the coming month.
In an announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange, Rebbetzin Feldman said: “Diamond Rose NL is confident that at least four kimberlite bodies have been located. These bodies are within 10 kilometers of each other which, when confirmed through imminent follow up drilling program, will constitute a new kimberlite cluster in the north
This represents a “major break-through” for the company as it now believes that it has located a source for the diamonds found in creeks and loose surface deposits in the area. And its geologists expect that drilling will find the pipes to be relatively large “because the geological setting of its tenements alloes for large sections of preserved diatremes”, whose presence closer to the earth’s surface shows that when the diamonds were formed they cooled quickly and so were less likely to dissolve into the surrounding rock.
“Finding the pipes is like finding a needle in a haystack,” she continued. “There are only five located sites in the country and only 15 diamond mines in the world. The Argyle mine is the largest in the world, and that’s located in the same general area as our tenements.
“I asked our geologist – who was involved in the team that let to the discovery of the Argyle – whether our find could rival the Argyle; she said on one pipe no, on three or four maybe’. We will not know exactly what we have until we drill into the pipes and see how many diamonds there are. But I’m hoping that it’s a world-class discovery. The odds are that it could be because the pipes are large and the area we’re in has produced very nice gem-quality diamonds.”
Should the drilling planned this year realize the potential, it will give birth to a substantial injection of funds into
Rebbetzin Feldman, whose brother is mining magnate Rabbi Jospeh Gutnick, said: “What’s kept me going, firstly, is the faith and belief that I’m going to be successful because of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s blessings to my family. I just believe that whatever the Rebbe says happens eventually. God may be a bit slow, but He gets there!
“Secondly, the motivation has been t a major supporter of the Yeshiva and Chabad houses. I just felt that I couldn’t give up because the purpose was too important. Money alone would not have been a sufficient motivator if it was just for me. Money is not that important to me – otherwise I would not have married a rabbi!”
