JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) –The new technology business case of TSX- and JSE-listed Rockwell Diamonds has been completed and submitted to the board for approval.

Rockwell posted an improved financial performance for the first quarter of fiscal 2012, reducing general and administrative expenses by 19% to $1.8-million and preserving its net cash at $3-million, after spending $2.2-million of capital at the Tirisano project.

Used by the Russians for more than 30 years, the potentially game-changing machines have throughput capacities of 150 t/h and 200 t/h.

The sweet spot of the bulk x-ray machines is in the coarser diamonds, of the kind that Rockwell recovers at Saxendrift and which it expects to recover at Nuwejaarskraal and Wouterspan.

Eighty percent of the revenue at Rockwell’s Saxendrift operation is from stones larger than 10 mm, which is grist to the mill of these bulk x-ray machines.

“That’s their niche,” Rockwell CEO James Campbell tells Mining Weekly Online.

The new technology would not be anywhere near as applicable at Rockwell’s Tirisano mine, where diamond sizes are smaller.

Tirisano’s first two processing streams are being commissioned and a new front-end screen will be commissioned at Saxendrift before the oncoming wet season.

Because Rockwell has raised C$6.5-million from asset sales, its capital-raising exercise may be lowered to less than C$15-million – instead of the previously targeted C$20-million – for the development of Wouterspan and expansion of Tirisano.

Rockwell has secured several subscription agreements from Johannesburg and Cape Town on its capital-raising road shows and is targeting a 20% South African shareholding, which currently totals only 8%.

Beneficiation revenue from the company’s joint venture with Steinmetz trebled to $943 842 in the quarter, when revenue was $8.5-million on the back of marginally higher $1 631/ct diamond prices.

The focus is on optimising existing operations and prioritising the project pipeline.

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