What Shefa Gems does
Shefa Gems Ltd (LON:SEFA) is an Israel-based exploration mining company with its operations orientated to the north of the country.
The firm is primarily a precious stones miner, with its drilling and sampling programmes having discovered rubies, sapphires, Carmel sapphires, and diamonds.
Shefa says its main strategy is to focus on exploration targets that it deems to have the highest upside and can be brought into production at a relatively low cost.
What Shefa Gems owns
The company owns two prospecting and one exploration permit in northern Israel, covering a total area of 614 square kilometres.
The principal exploration targets are the primary volcanic sources on Mount Carmel and the secondary sources of valley-filled sediment deposits throughout the Kishon River.
At Mount Carmel, the company has identified four sources in its exploration permit: Rakefet Magmatic Complex (RMC), Muhraka, Har Alon and Beit Oren.
To date, most of the exploration work has been carried out on the RMC, which lies on the southern portion of Mount Carmel. The company has completed geological mapping as well as rock and soil sampling, which has led to the identification of gem and industrial minerals within its target mineral assemblage.
At Kishon, the primary exploration target is the Kishon Mid-Reach placer where the company’s most advanced exploration project and ongoing exploration activities are being undertaken with the aim of defining a SAMREC compliant Mineral Resource.
The company has delineated the Kishon Mid Reach placer in three zones; Zone 1, Zone 2 and Zone 3, all of which are at different stages of development.
Zones 1 and 2, which cover around 3.5km of the total length of the placer, are believed to contain some 1.1mln tonnes of gemstone bearing gravel. These two zones have been the focus of the company’s drilling and a bulk sampling programme.
Out of roughly 186 boreholes drilled, a total of 137 boreholes were drilled specifically in Zone 1 + 15 bulk sampling and 23 boreholes in Zone 2 + 26 bulk and mini bulk sampling, whilst approximately over 6 kilotonnes in bulk sampling has been completed in these two zones.
Inflexion points
- In October, the company delivered its highest grade results to date from Zone 2 of its Kishon Mid-Reach project in Northern Israel, with a bulk sample yielding a record target mineral assemblage grade of 467 carats per hundred tonnes
- In its interim results, Sefa said its focus over the next six months is to get a permit to start trial mining at the Kishon Mid-Reach Zone 1
- The firm renewed its prospecting licence for Zone 1 in August for another 12 months
Looking ahead
In late May Shefa said it would become revenue-generating once mining began at the Kishon Mid-Reach Zone 1 area.
Following the record sample results in October, it said three more bulk samples from Zone 2 were being processed at its treatment facility and the results are expected in the first quarter of 2020.
The company is also aiming to build on the launch of the "Heaven on Earth" jewellery collection, which was designed using gems recovered from its projects, in order to develop its “Mine to Market” strategy.
Chairman Michael Rosenberg said that over the rest of 2019 the firm would engage with London-based advisors to help expand understanding of Shefa’s investment proposition in the City, adding that the company had “never been in a stronger position”.
With shares trading at 5p as of 17 October 2019, Shefa Gems has a market cap of £8.6mln.
