URA Holdings PLC (LSE:URAH) has appointed Bonas Group as its sales partner for marketing and selling rough emeralds from the Gravelotte Emerald Mine in South Africa.
Bonas will manage the entire sales process, including planning, sorting, valuation, and marketing through their established tender platform.
Investors were told the inaugural sale is planned for the second half, with viewings to take place at Bonas' facilities in Bangkok.
Additionally, URA has qualified as a client of DelGatto Diamond Finance Fund (DDFF), gaining financial flexibility for the sales process and future financing opportunities.
"We are excited to partner with Bonas Group and DelGatto Diamond Finance Fund," said URA chief executive Bernard Olivier.
"This collaboration enhances our capability to bring our ethically mined emeralds to market while ensuring transparency and maximising value for our stakeholders. After a long period of hard groundwork, we are now entering an exciting period for URA and our shareholders."
Gravelotte was sold to URA by Australia’s Magnum Mining for an initial £100,000 in shares and payments of £100,000 for every five million carats mined up to a maximum of £1 million.
The team didn’t hang about after buying the asset. It compiled a JORC resource estimate for the Cobra and Discovery deposits that has identified around 29 million carats of contained emeralds, giving an initial life of mine of almost a decade.
To add a little sizzle, URA’s team has also compiled a list of exploration targets that could add a further 168 million to 344 million carats to that total.
Instead of following the traditional process of feasibility studies, financing and building, URA has taken a fast-track and phased approach.
So, on a shoestring, the company sourced and installed crushing equipment, screens, conveyors and dewatering pumps along with an optical sorter – in other words, everything required to get into production.
It has been helped by the fact that Gravelotte is a historic mine with infrastructure such as civil works, water storage, accommodation, roads into the site, and, crucially, access to grid electricity, which lowers the capex as well as the day-to-day costs. Going forward, URA intends to invest future profits to expand and grow output.