Sierra Leone’s largest diamond-mining company, Koidu Holdings, says it has secured funding for the $150-million expansion at the Koidu kimberlite project and implementation is gaining momentum. CEO Jan Joubert reports that the expansion project incorporates all the currently evaluated kimberlite resources on the property. The richer K1 pipe, which was mined by vertical pit methods between 2005 and 2007, is currently being redeveloped to be brought back into production by the end of this year.

Gold vending machines are to be placed in every major city in Britain after the country's first Gold to Go ATM was switched on in a West London shopping centre on Friday. The company behind the machines that vend a 1g bar the size of a cellphone sim card aimed at ordinary shoppers plans to install 50 across Britain over the next few years. "It has not even started. The buying power of the smart money has moved into gold, but we didn't see the normal consumer buying gold. We have yet to hit the record price from the 1980s," said Thomas Geissler, CEO of Ex Oriente Lux, which are already turning over $52m/year from machines in the Middle East and Germany.

Australia's Lynas Corporation lost more than 11% of its value on Friday after it emerged the company's Malaysian rare-earth refinery may be delayed by a government review that called for higher safety standards, further limiting supply of rare earths. Once in operation, the Lynas project could account for more than a third of the world’s supply outside of China. China in recent months closed or consolidated more than 35 rare earth mines and cut export quotas sparking concerns in the US and other industrial nations about access to supplies and causing a frenzy of exploration and development activity.

MarketWatch reports gold futures lost ground in electronic trading Friday as the dollar strengthened against major rivals. Gold for August delivery declined $16.70, or 1.1%, to $1,486.10 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. A stronger greenback tends to discourage investment in dollar-priced commodities such as gold. The precious metal was also pushed lower as some uncertainty about the euro zone’s debt problems lifted. Despite the recent weakness, gold prices remain over 5% higher this year. Silver followed gold lower Friday, dropping close to 3%.

BHP said in a statement overnight that the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment had notified it of the approval, following an environmental impact statement submitted in December, 2010. BHP said Jansen would employ an average of 1,900 people during construction and create approximately 1,000 operational jobs once the mine has reached full capacity.

Outotec has agreed with Samarco Mineração S.A. on a turnkey delivery of the world's largest iron ore pelletizing plant in Brazil. The contract value is approximately EUR 200 million, which will be booked in Outotec's second quarter order intake. In addition, the contract includes local EUR 100 million purchases performed on behalf of the customer. Some 90% of the services and supplies for the project will be delivered from Brazil. Image by Outotec

BIV reports that Eastern Platinum, a Vancouver-based precious metals producer (TSX:ELR), will fight a class action lawsuit filed against it earlier this week: On Tuesday, Siskinds LLP, a London, Ontario-based firm, filed a suit in the Superior Court of Ontario that alleges Eastern failed to disclose “material information” about an interruption of operations at its Crocodile River mine in January.

Timmins Gold Corp. reported an annual net profit of $11.5m for 2011, the first year of commercial operations of its San Francisco gold project in Mexico. The nine cent a share profit on revenues of $84.3m reported Thursday compared with a net loss of $8.6m last year when the company's income was zero. The company expects to average annual gold production of approximately 100,000 ounces at base case life of mine cash costs of US$489 per ounce. Timmins moved to the Toronto main board in March where it is worth some $137m.

The stock of cobalt and copper miner Metorex is up by a third this year following Brazilian giant Vale's $1.1bn bid for the mid-tier producer. With reports surfacing that Jinchuan, China's biggest nickel miner, is readying a competing offer shareholders of the Johannesburg-based company look set to extract further value ahead of a vote on July 22. Metorex has aggressive expansion plans for its central and Southern African projects and aims to more than double its current annual copper output of around 50,000 tonnes. It's a far cry from the situation in 2009 when the company was fighting for survival amid serious cost overruns in the Congo.