Germany’s Chancellor plans lithium deal with Serbia after Rio ruling
Olaf Scholz plans to visit Serbia this week to secure supplies of lithium that are critical for the nation’s energy transition and auto industry.
Eira Thomas, the renowned diamond geologist whose spectacular success in the diamond exploration game earned her the moniker ‘Queen of Diamonds’, has resigned from the company she helped found, Stornoway Diamonds.
In a news release yesterday, Stornoway published a statement from Thomas, who served as CEO until 2008:
“Having completed the acquisition of a 100 percent interest in the Renard Diamond Project and having recently strengthened the board with the addition of three new excellent board members, I believe the company is now in the strongest position it has been in for years. Accordingly, I think this is an appropriate time for me to pass the torch as Chairman of the Company. I wish the Company great success and I look forward to seeing the successful development of Renard, both for the Company and its shareholders and also for the people of Québec.”
Thomas vaulted into diamond mining lore in the heady days of the early 90s when, as a newly minted geologist, she made a discovery in the High Arctic that would change her life and the direction of the diamond mining industry in Canada. Working alongside her father, colourful Welsh mining engineer Grenville Thomas, the younger Thomas discovered a mammoth kimberlite pipe underneath the waters of Lac de Gras. The site of the core sample was to become the Diavik mine, a multi-billion-dollar diamond deposit.
Profiling Thomas in 2007, Portfolio.com tells the story that has become the stuff of diamond mining legend:
In May of that year, Thomas and consulting geologist Robin Hopkins, acting on a hunch, decided to drill underwater, off an island in Lac de Gras. The drill crew wasn’t happy about it, but Eira insisted. When Thomas and Hopkins inspected the core sample, what they found took their breath away: a two-carat diamond embedded inside. Thomas slept with the core sample under her pillow and flew to Vancouver the next day. After she presented the sample to her father, all he could muster was a single word: “No!” Her response was just as concise: “Yes!”
Eira Thomas, leading the Aber field team, had discovered what was then the highest-grade diamond mine in the world, estimated to contain more than 100 million carats, worth roughly $9 billion. The stones are of such high quality that, in 1999, Tiffany & Co. cut a deal with Aber to provide the high-end retailer with some $50 million in diamonds annually through 2013. Thomas’ find was so lucrative that Aber recently spent about $242 million to purchase the world-renowned jewelry house Harry Winston.
Watch the video on MINING.com
Stornoway said Tony Walsh will replace Thomas as CEO effective immediately. Walsh is President and CEO of Sabina Gold & Silver and has served as a Stornoway Director since 2003.
