The queen of diamonds on BNNTVYesterday hinted she is looking at a new deal.Will she buy and build Chidliak with Lucas Lundin and Lucara?
1. Queen of Diamonds
Handout/ KaminakEira Thomas
Eira Thomas, Kaminak Gold Corp.’s chief executive, is known as the “Queen of Diamonds” because she discovered the Diavik diamond mine in the Northwest Territories in 1994. But her recent track record is just as notable, Peter Koven reports.
Thomas co-founded Lucara Diamond Corp., which garnered worldwide attention last year when it discovered the second largest gem-quality diamond in history. Stornoway Diamond Corp., which she co-founded and led for several years, is close to bringing Quebec’s first diamond mine into production.
And now Kaminak is being sold to Goldcorp Inc. for $520 million – roughly triple its value at the start of 2016.
Like its peers in the junior gold mining sector, Kaminak was left for dead by most investors over the last few years. But the Vancouver-based firm staged a massive rebound in 2016 as gold prices rose and it released a promising feasibility study for the Coffee gold project in the Yukon. The study indicated Coffee could produce more than 200,000 ounces of bullion a year for several years at low all-in sustaining costs of US$550 an ounce.
Thomas, who joined Kaminak in 2013, acknowledged she’s stunned how far the company has come in a short period. Now that a brutal four-year bear market for gold stocks is finally ending, the top companies are separating themselves from the pack and enjoying big share price gains.
“You start to lose faith that you’ll ever see the light of day,” she said. “So it’s nice to come out the other end and realize that we’re not crazy, that our conviction is justified and that we have a really great project.”