Canadian mining company Diamcor Mining Incorporated has secured an additional US$4 million loan from its strategic alliance partner Tiffany & Co. for their Krone-Endora diamond mine in the Soutpansberg-area.

Diamcor made this announcement last Friday. The news of the additional funds that Diamcor acquired follows after Diamcor made it known in August this year that they had unearthed several thousand individual diamonds at Krone-Endora. 

Until the end of August, Diamcor had recovered individual diamonds with a total combined weight, before acidizing, of approximately 1 214.86 carats. Of these, the company was very pleased to note that 85 rough diamonds were 1 carat or larger.

In the meantime, Tiffany’s subsidiary, Tiffany & Co Canada, will provide the financing through a US$2.4 million term loan and a $1.6 million convertible debt debenture. Diamcor said that the financing will advance Krone-Endora.

Pursuant to the loan's closing, Diamcor will use the funds to procure equipment and expand the quarrying and in-field screening operational capacity of the mine.

Diamcor president and CEO Dean Taylor said, "We believe deploying this additional equipment now will allow us to further enhance results which are already meeting or exceeding our expectations and provide us with the ability to expedite our overall goals and targets for the long term."

All the activities that are currently underway at Krone-Endora, however, still form part of Diamcor’s testing exercises. This is due to the fact that the Department of Mineral Rights has yet to give the green light for the mine’s mining right licence. The company indicated that the process is underway and that they are confident of a favourable response from the department.