BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL Audio Webcast

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BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)

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BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON) Events

Company (Stock Code)	Date/Time	Event	Timezone: Australia/NSW
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:00PM	BON - Africa Down Under Conference Presentation - Mr Michael Woodborne, Managing Director
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:45AM	BON - Record Sales Price - Mr Michael Woodborne, Managing Director
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:00AM	BON - Positive First Results for Marine Phosphate Project - Mr Michael Woodborne, Managing Director
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:00AM	BON - Capital Raising and Expansion of Namibian Marine Diamond Project - Mr Michael Woodborne, MD
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Fri, 8 Jun 2007 03:00PM	BON - Namibia Diamond Operations Update - Mr Michael Woodborne, MD
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Wed, 23 May 2007 01:30PM	BON - Solid Production Results from Mining Operations - Mr Michael Woodborne, MD
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:00PM	BON - Sale of Diamonds from First Production - Mr Michael Woodborne, MD
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Tue, 10 Oct 2006 04:00PM	BON - First Diamond Discovery - Mr Michael Woodborne, MD
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:30PM 02:30PM Australia/WA	Annual General Meeting The Celtic Club, 48 Ord Street, West Perth, WA
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Tue, 11 Mar 2008	Interim Results
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Wed, 28 Nov 2007 11:00AM	Annual General Meeting The Celtic Club, 48 Ord Street West Perth WA 6005
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Thu, 15 Mar 2007	Interim Results
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Wed, 29 Nov 2006 09:30AM	Annual General Meeting The Celtic Club, 48 Ord Street West Perth WA
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Fri, 29 Sep 2006	Full Year Results
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Thu, 16 Mar 2006	Interim Results
BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)	Wed, 30 Nov 2005 01:15PM 01:15PM Australia/WA	Annual General Meeting The Celtic Club, 48 Ord St, West Perth, WA
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BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)

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PRESENTATION BY MICHAEL WOODBORNE, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF BONAPARTE DIAMOND MINES NL (BON)

“Africa Down Under Conference Presentation”

http://www.brr.com.au/event/51104

 

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2008, 2:00 PM.

 

            BON    Thank you. Honourable Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, we’re very pleased to be here today, and thanks to Bill and his team for putting on another

10                    opportunity for us to embrace Africa and discussion on mineral exploration and mining. We’re also very pleased today to have our partners with us to gain investments, Ambassador Itenge, and also to be presenting with Mr. Ilende from the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

 

15                    While you read this next and very important statement, copy of which is available in our booth if you’d like to look at it in  more detail, I would just like to tell you that we’re obviously going to tell you a little bit about a girl’s best friend today, but in the process we also wanted to tell you a little bit about something we believe is extremely exciting and something which could

20                    possibly be described as a farmer’s best friend which we’ll elaborate on in a short while.

 

                        A little bit about the company, a bit of history, we’ve got about 190 million shares on issue listed in October. We have $4.7 million in the bank having

25                    had the fortune of having banked nearly a million dollars from diamond production in this quarter. We have an excellent range of experience in the Board of Directors headed up with the Chairman Ted Ellyard from Hardman Petroleum, Hardman Resources. Also in the Board is Andrew Drummond from Minemakers who are developing the Wonarah Phosphate deposit.

30                    Further down in our management team, it’s pretty much a hands-on operation, Roger Daniel is ex-CEO of Diamond Fields International with a broad range of experience and below that a very good team. As the coffee guys would explain, excellence in your team is a key component to successful projects.

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                        Our projects are in phosphate and diamonds. Phosphate projects are in Namibia and in Peru. Our diamond projects are predominantly in South Africa on land and we have had some exploration in Namibia as well. What I’d like to talk to you about today are the other diamond projects moving

40                    across the phosphate. It’s a good question,  how do we get from diamonds to phosphate?  On Namibia, for starters, is known for its sea diamonds, it’s one of the few places in the world, apart from South Africa as well where there’s much smaller industry, where you’ll get a unique deposit of gem quality diamonds, 95% gem quality stones lying on the ocean bed. They

45                    produce as Abraham said, over a million carats of that comes up off the seabed.

 

                        Bonaparte has had a long exploration history in developing marine diamond deposits from that rebuilt specialist skills. We spent our time on the ocean sometimes looking down at the sea and sometimes looking up at the sky, that’s the nature of the ocean, but we do have an intense and very specific knowledge of Namibia and its marine mining operations. So how do those two come together?  Well, in the ocean, on the ocean bed of Namibia, there’s

5                      something that has been known about for a long time but undeveloped till now as a result of available technologies and that is the marine phosphate deposit which I’d like to talk to you about.

 

                        When you say marine phosphate deposit, it throws up a number of questions

10                    in people’s mind. What about the phosphate industry?  We’ll tell you a little bit about that. It throws up the question of the resource, what kind of resource do you have down there?  How big is it?  More importantly, the third question is, can you get it up?  Is there technology for you to extract it from the seabed and to process it?  So I’d like to cover some of those queries with you as we

15                    go through.

 

                        Phosphate market, two important factors here, world population is growing in an alarming rate, and the other is that there’s no substitute for phosphorous in agriculture. What you saw there briefly was a position of phosphate

20                    producers in the world. What we have when you take out the countries that actually consume all of the phosphate they produce is two countries that by in a position to export to the rest of the world. We think that that is a pretty exciting position for us in this big deposit.

 

25                    As a comparative in terms of what’s happening in price, looking at the iron ore industry as a comparative in terms of price movement to phosphor and phosphate rock, in particular. As you can see, the iron ore industry took several jumps as they’ve gone forward but the rating, which phosphate prices have increased, is enormous by comparison. So where does that leave us? 

30                    What’s driving that price increase?  Well, it’s effectively that issue of population growth and the requirement to feed that population to generate revenues, increase quality of life, bio fuels are driving ahead in the face of rising oil prices and agricultural land is being called upon to be more productive in order to meet these demands for population growth and feed.

35

                        Basically, we’re working with an industry that has got very strong fundamentals. Price has increased, as we have explained. While we don’t know where the price will settle, certainly all the drivers that have supported that increase are going to leave it at a place well above its original baseline of

40                    $50 a tonne, and clearly, more phosphate is going to be needed. That creates a unique window of opportunity. With these types of price rises, obviously people have accelerated their plans to expand, new mines are being sought, and new projects are being put on line. These things take a large amount of investment and looking forward, a lot of the projects that are likely to come on

45                    stream are going to be doing so in 2012 and beyond. So really, the next big producer who comes into the market is going to have a key advantage in taking the entry levels for any further plans.

 

                        Let’s have a look at the resource of Namibia. Focusing on to the west coast of Africa and into Namibia, the deposits off the coast of Namibia were discovered and developed in the 70’s. In the late 90’s, detailed studies were done on those deposits. There are two provinces in the north and in the

5                      south. Basically, these discoveries are part of the broader based knowledge of phosphate deposits around the globe sitting on the continental shelves but at that stage, considered outside of the range of existing technologies. Well, that’s not the case any longer, the tenements we hold in the phosphate deposits of the southern part of Namibia, 10,000 in total; 5,000 of those

10                    have been issued and 5,000 square kilometres remain on application and we hold those in joint venture with Tungeni Investments, our Namibian partners.

 

                        The deposits are located in water depths of 100 m to 250 m generally in that province and of deposits, specifically in this area of focus which is one of the

15                    nine properties that we have under development. The deposit sits in the depth range of around about 185 m to 220 m. The deposits are accessible with current marine mining and dredging technologies which are being used in water depths of up to 600 m and we’ll explain a little bit more about that. More importantly, the area that we’re focusing on here, the Meob Project,

20                    which is one of the properties, as I said, we did some reconnaissance work in December 2007 to verify the regional mapping trends and showed that what levels of phosphate in the recovered samples are between 1% and 18%, just the basic screening out of the cost fraction, anything larger than a millimetre. We’ve got enrichment of up to 24% and further taking out in the fine fraction

25                    the shell components leaves you with enrichment of up to 35%. Now, that’s a pretty simple process. There’s nothing complicated about the deposit and it sits on the seabed in an unconsolidated sediment.

 

                        Now, what are we doing to move ahead?  We’ve got a program underway, as

30                    we speak, of sampling to define a resource in that property as an initial step forward, to take this forward into pre-feasibility stage. The marine sampling and definition of resource is no different than what we do on land, the fact that we are at sea, just means we take a different road, so but bumpy at times, but it’s the same process that we follow.

35

                        We take course, we take samples, we put those onto the vessel using very standard techniques. What you see here is a gravity core which is used from the vessel to recover core materials, the same as you would on land using drill rigs. It’s standard equipment, there’s nothing brand new in it. It’s being

40                    used many times before. We’ve used it substantially to define diamond resources. We have established quality control and insurance procedures for positioning, sample handling, and we are using sample spacings and geostatistical methods by independent experts that are suitable for JORC compliant resource estimates. We have done this in the past, as I say, with

45                    diamond exploration and mining operations.

 

                        So moving on to the mining and the beneficiation aspects, soon as you say under water people say, “Well, how are going to get that up?”  Well, one of the associations that we have is that dredging and mining have long been associated. It’s not uncommon to see dredges in floating in ponds where a alluvial deposits such as heavy minerals, or tin, or gold, are being used, so the ability to stir up a slurry and process it on the dredger is common knowledge, commonly used in mining.

5

                        In terms of accessing deeper water, well dredging operations are underworld lead by the Dutch and the Belgians have been moving enormous quantities of material to generate fantastic, new coastal features like they have in Dubai. In oil and gas, we’re up in the poles there, that picture you see with the

10                    iceberg is nothing we’re planning but it’s something that happened up in the northern hemisphere where they dredge down on the seabed to protect oil wells. The other sample picture you see there, which I’ll acknowledge some of the major dredging companies, their websites for full access to this information, is flexible pipe dredges that worked on to depths of nearly 1,200

15                    m and they operate to meter accuracy at those depths. So, we’re dealing with an industry that has adequate technology available to us to access these deposits. The beneficiation of phosphate is well established from land based phosphate processing operations.

 

20                    So what we have in concept here, off the coast of Namibia, in the deposits that we have on the seabed is an unconsolidated sediment that can be dredged up off the seabed where we have at sea an initial phase of enrichment through a simple screening process to produce an enriched slurry. That slurry will then get processed or get transported to the shore on

25                    what we would call sister boats, ferries moving from their mother mining vessel across to the shore and there it would offload the deposit into a stockpile of pre-enriched material, that would be done on a campaign basis if we were targeting to move about 6 or 7 million tonnes of material off the seabed and that could be done within a period of around four to five months

30                    potentially. Once stockpiled on shore, it looks to be a fairly simple process, predominantly gravity and possibly some chemical treatment to produce a further enriched deposit which would then be available import for export directly to our target markets. What’s interesting here is in comparing the marine phosphates with land based phosphates is the lack of the requirement

35                    to build large access facilities in terms of roads or rail, we use the sea. The requirement to breakdown this material, it’s unconsolidated on the seabed so no crushing and processing, it’s a fairly simple process.

 

                        As far as target markets go, and before I get to that, we have had some

40                    independent research published that shows in the order of 6 to 7 million tonnes getting to shore for beneficiation and a product of around about 3 million tonnes output at $350 a tonne that has a gross revenue of $980 million. In terms of an operating cost, well, the independent research suggests that around $50 a tonne would be a reasonable, if not, large price

45                    so they are substantial margins to be made in this deposit.

 

                        Export is pretty easy from that point. This would be the development of potentially a world class deposit sitting off the coast of Namibia with enormous potential for the Namibian industries and economy as an export product to target markets would of course be crossed to South America and North America and Europe and if required, across to Asia. But also very importantly, it provides a source of material directly into Africa where that is a certain requirement to develop food and agriculture.

5

                        In closing, I’ll shoot very quickly through our program. We are busy with a beneficiation study as part of a scoping study. We’ll complete our sampling and get resources that must out towards the end of this year and have the other prospects to bring in play. At that point, I think I’ll just make a note that

10                    we are also exploring to develop an equivalent deposit off coast to Peru. We are really looking forward at this moment in time in summary to building and developing an uncomplicated, unconsolidated sediment deposit of potential world class off Namibia. We’re working in the realm where there are available technologies and we have with that a strong market advantage to be that first

15                    producer of phosphate in the new industry. We have a great team. I’m certain we’ll have the ability to deliver that, and backing us up we have a little bit of revenue coming in from our diamond projects which are available in South Africa, I’m not going to focus on those at the moment. I’ll leave you with the fact that, I think it was Atlas Iron that have a wonderful saying, a little logo that

20                    says “in the right place, at the right time.” I think we are in the right place in Namibia at the right time.

 

                        Thank you very much.

 

PRESENTATION CONCLUDED

 

 

 

 

Contact brr@brr.com.au for more information

 

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