Star Diamond Corporation: Renewed Focus on Prairie Diamonds

0:08 So, welcome to today's Star Diamonds Live Summit today, hosted by 6. I'm pleased to introduce the speakers for today, CEO Ewan Mason and Senior Technical Advisor George Reid. They'll take us through a company presentation and after that we'll be accepting questions. And as a reminder, you can submit questions in the Q&A panel on the right-hand side of the screen at any point during the presentation.

0:30 If you'd like to contact the STAR team, feel free to fill out the survey linked in the chat. As always, the summit is being recorded and will be available on six.com to watch afterwards. So without further ado, I'd like to hand it over to you gentlemen, and we can get started. So George can go ahead and turn on the slide deck and gentlemen feel free. All right, thank you very much. Good morning all and thank you for joining us today on what I would call our coming out presentation. Star Diamond is engaging in a renewed focus on what I would call Prairie Diamonds, and that's through our 2 diamond projects that we have in Canada. With me today is George Reid, our senior technical adviser, and he's going to wander through the main points of the project. But I'm just going to give you a little background before we get started. And I would encourage you to save your questions to the end of the presentation when we'll answer all of them if time permits.

1:24 Our 2 projects, the first project is the Fort Alicorn properties and Star Diamond deposit. These constitute 2 or 3 perhaps of the largest undeveloped diamond deposits on the planet. These deposits constitute over 25% of type IIa diamonds, which have a couple of interesting properties to them. Number 1, they're almost pure, total pure. They have very little impurities in them, come in some great colors, you know, white, brown, and even famous pink diamonds. In addition to that, these diamonds in that type of anomalous quantity indicate the presence of much larger diamonds to be found as you go forward. We know this historically from other mines on the planet that have type 2a diamonds and they find massive diamonds.

2:15 In our testing programs we have found diamonds of over 50 carats. So we know they're there and we just want to move forward with this project. For the last 5 and a bit years, we've had a partner with Rio Tinto PLC. They were initially a 60% partner And then we went through some troubles with them and we came to a new agreement and now they're a 25% partner as we move forward here. They spent a good deal of time and a lot of money, probably upwards of $300M working on it, seeking to reaffirm the work we had done. And in fact, at last year's joint venture meeting in March, they just did that and told us it was one of the largest, richest undeveloped down in the mines in the world. And they were looking at a mine life of over 80 years.

3:01 Anyhow, they went to their executive committee with a couple of options to move forward with development and were turned down. And of course, we were shocked by that. This is all a matter of public record, as was the Rio exploration staff that were on the case. So today, we're in the process of trying to get the other 75% back from them on a good footing so we can move forward with this illustrious project. And George will tell you more in a few minutes. Our second project is the Buffalo Hills Diamond project, which is about 400km north of Edmonton in Alberta. This project has been sitting there for quite some time and we have a 50% partner, Cantera. Quite a bit of work was done prior to 2010, 2012 and then one of our partners quit claimed and so that left us and Cantera with 50% ownership.

3:49 While we were sitting around waiting for Rio to decide what they were going to do with Star, we actually hired a professional diamond examiner to come in and take a look at the Buffalo Hills diamonds. And to our shock, they turned out to be anomalous and type 2a diamonds as well. The difference with this occurrence is these kimberlite pipes, of which there are over 30 of them, a lot of them break the surface. And as everybody that's been following Stardiamond knows, that's not the case with the star and falk properties. They are 50 to 75 meters beneath overburden. These pipes are at surface and have type 2A. So we're going to be in discussions with our partner, Cantera, to discuss how we might go forward with that. But certainly our number 1 priority is the Star and Falk projects, which our PEA

4:34 in 2017 indicated that there was, or 2018 I think it was, indicated that there's a $2Bn NPV on this project for a 25-year mine life. And this thing will go for multiples of 25 years. But in addition to all that information that we had, we saw a situation where we really needed to get out there and get some new investors into the story. So we're hoping we will move forward with this, with Rio's assistance in mending the project back to us. So I think at this point in time, I'll turn it over to George, and George can give you the nitty gritty from a 25,000-foot level. Thank you very much, Ewan, and I look forward to providing you a good technical understanding of our very exciting project, Prairie Diamonds, to look at them and the resurgence of interest in prairie diamonds.

5:29 Great place to be. And entitled Advancing the World's Largest and Most Attractive Diamond Development Project. We're certainly not shy to say that. You can see on the pictures at the beginning, beautiful octahedral diamonds from the Fort Olicorn and the forest as they look in the fall, which is very manageable, very accessible. Safe harbour statement, you can read at your leisure. And then we get to the evaluation of diamond deposits, which is very complicated, in that you have to have a look at tons, grade, tons of ore or kimberlite and grade in carats per 100 tons and most importantly, diamond price.

6:15 Diamond price is very variable and unique to the deposit and the kimberlite that erupts those diamonds and brings them from deep within the Earth in the mantle, some 200 or 400 kilometers down to the surface, where they can then be recovered in a mine or an open-pit mine or an underground mine.

6:37 Star and Orion South have significant carrots and notably combined with a very high price. Diamond size frequency distribution is unique to the kimberlite that brings it to the surface. So when we talk about size frequency distribution, we say that diamond size populations are normally log-normally distributed, which means there are exponentially more little ones than big ones. But the big diamonds are the real economic drivers. And there are certain unique kimberlites that have unusually coarse diamond size frequency distributions. If we look at this complicated statistical chart on the right, the essence is that the kimberlite that produces some of the largest diamonds currently being mined in the world is letzeng, and notably, karoe in Botswana. Letzeng is in Lesotho.

7:36 Letzeng is in green. Karowi in Botswana is in blue. Letsing has produced the largest diamond, I think is 950 carats. Karowi has produced 1,700 carat stone. So, and lo and behold, that the principal economic unit on the star kimberlite, the EJF, recovered from the underground in a bulk sample, lies between those 2 lines. So we believe that we can anticipate some very big diamonds in a future mine. If you look at that table on the lower left side, You can see that there is an enormous variability in the price from what was a low price at that time for Gachacoué in Canada, up to Le Tseng in Lesotho, which has a command, a fantastic dollar per carat price.

8:32 And even though it has a very, very low grade, it is still a very economic project. Other advantages of our project, particularly in the Fortelacorn, is a large long-life mine, 66 million carats over a 38-year mine life. Interesting geology, we have very good understanding of that geology. Attractive economics, as Ewan has already mentioned, 2 billion NPV over 19% IRR in the base case, with a 3.4 year payback, which is almost like an oil and gas project. Low risk jurisdiction in Saskatchewan, and it is fully permitted from a provincial and federal point of view of environmental permits, which is a unique situation.

9:24 Trading on the TSX, the share is outstanding and fully diluted, and Newmont mining corporation being a major shareholder in the background. If we look at the local geography, as opposed to many other diamond projects that we know about in the Northwest Territories or Renard in Quebec, which is at the end of an all-weather road. We are not in a remote location. We are more or less in the breadbasket of Saskatchewan, and we are surrounded by towns and villages. City of Prince Albert is 60 kilometres to the west as the crow flies. And in the city of Nipawin, both upstream and downstream, there are hydroelectric projects that would provide future power to this project.

10:14 The Project is in the Fort Alicorn Forest. The Fort Alicorn Forest is an actively worked forest. It's not a nature reserve. It's outlined in purple. The array of kimberlites is shown in yellow with star and around south at the southeast end. And they have been extensively evaluated. We are only 20 kilometers off paved highway and some 20 kilometers off the power grid. There are many people that live in the area that would seek opportunities to work on this project and have mining experience from potash, uranium and oil and gas in the oil fields of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

11:01 Looking at the claim situation on a more focused scale, we see the kimberlites now marked in red, with the 2 evaluated kimberlites, or significantly evaluated kimberlites, in blue. And We can see the patchwork quilt of the farmer's field surrounding the project, and then the Forte Lecourne forest in green. Notably, there are more than 60 other kimberlites in this area, many of which contain diamonds, and some of which contain awesome volumes of diamond-bearing kimberlite. We have in the past done extensive work on this project, principally commencing with the star kimberlite, which was our only focus at the beginning. We have enlarged this to control the whole region.

11:54 And we set out with core drilling to define the extent and the internal structure of these kimberlites. Large diameter drilling to get grade determination across the kimberlite. Those are the yellow blocks as opposed to the black dots, which are the core drill holes. And then we also embarked, particularly in Star, on a very extensive 75,000 tonne underground bulk sample, which was collected some 235 meters below surface using a conventional shaft, 3 kilometers of lateral drifting, which you can see in the little spider web in the middle of that diagram, and took out a vast quantity of almost 11,000 carats of plus 1 millimeter diamonds.

12:41 We then, having developed this methodology for sampling these Fortalecorn kimberlites, which are buried underneath at least 100 meters of overburden. We then translated that work to the neighboring, only 1 kilometer away, Orion South kimberlite, which is also very large in size. We then were at work with the large diameter drill program and the underground bulk sampling program when we were faced with the world financial crisis in 2008. And unfortunately, in early 2009, we had to terminate that underground development. So the diamond parcel you see from Orion South is considerably smaller than we have from Star.

13:30 We'll talk more about that in a moment, but a lot of work has been done. Obviously, resources and indicated and inferred resources have been defined, and you can see the blue line would be the pit boundary of a very large open pit on both of those maps. The scale bars there have a 250-meter tick points on them, and the grid on the map has a 500-meter scale on it. So very, very large kimberlites, very much unlike the kimberlites in the Northwest Territories, which would be tiny by comparison, but with higher grade. The blue line is the pit boundary, the green line is the inferred, the red line is the indicated, and obviously you can see the concentration of our work within the indicator.

14:25 If we then look at the diamonds, the diamond populations is very attractive. In 2021, the world average was about $116 a carat. As you can see, we have a price of some $210 a carat for Star, $169 for Orion South. These are 2018 prices, and a weighted average for the 2 deposits together of $190 a carat. We will talk more about the high-quality stones and the type 2a diamonds in the next couple of slides.

15:07 Our evaluation parcels have produced some very interesting diamonds. As Ewan says, up to 50 carats. The almost 50 carat stones were not top quality, but they were type IIa. Here we can see the highest value stones recovered from both of these kimberlites, notably the internally flawless octahedra in the center and on the top right, and then the fancy yellow diamond from around south on the left, and the 2 large type IIa stones, both with gin and tonic white that we see down at the bottom, and notably, the very high value dollar per carat values for those stones.

15:53 If we flip over the page and we talk a little bit about type IIa diamonds, type IIa diamonds in general world production are very rare. These are diamonds that contain no nitrogen or boron that enters the carbon structure. Obviously, if there was boron, it would be very beneficial because it would turn the diamonds blue. But these diamonds can be the most perfect white. They can be brown, but they also in rare cases, both we see from Karowi and Letsing, we recover, or they recover, pink type IIa, some of which are vivid pinks and of extreme value. Notably, Letsing has about 29% of this size range that's shown on the diagram of Type IIa goods in a very rigorous run-of-mind publication.

16:49 It was published some years ago, and we can see that Star is very close behind it, between 25 and 28 percent of Type 2As in that size range. Around South, we have a slightly lower number, but very much elevated in terms of general world production. So as a consequence, we should also remember that All of the largest diamonds recovered, and particularly when we think of the Cullinan stone, which was the 3106

17:23 carat diamond that was recovered from the Cullinan mine in South Africa in 1905, presented to the British crown, and it was cut into a number of pieces, Cullinan I being in the scepter that we saw at Queen Elizabeth's funeral, and in the royal crown, it's Cullinan II, is the principal stone in that crown. So these are the really dramatic diamonds that can come from this unusual population that exists within this kimberlite. As Ewan has stated, we did a preliminary economic analysis in 2018, which showed very attractive economics. We had some 470 million tonnes between Starr and Orion South that could be mined at a weighted average diamond grade of 14 carats per 100 tonnes, leading us to recover an estimated 66 million carats over a mine life of 34 years, with some 4 years to build.

18:30 So we can see the NPV at 7% pre-tax and royalty of 3.3% and 22%

18:41 post-tax and royalty, we come down to 2 billion and 19% IRR. So, very, very strong numbers. Pre-production capital cost of about $1.4 billion and a 3.4 year initial payback period. Obviously, we have to look for cost savings in moving huge volumes of overburden, large volumes of kimberlite, and obviously processing a recovery process that recovers large diamonds without breaking them. And the 2 principal components of that process are bucket wheel excavators, certainly to remove the overburden at very low unit costs, and then XRT diamond sorters in order to iteratively crush the kimberlite and recover the big diamonds before they get broken or have the possibility of being broken by the recovery process.

19:43 This procedure has certainly been perfected at Karowi Mine by Lucara in Botswana. If we move on, we can see that in the general arrangement of the PEA, we have 2 open pits, Orion South and Star, overburdened waste path to the West, processed kimberlite to the East, Saskatchewan River to the South. That does not affect the open pits, nor do the open pits affect the river. Notably, Orion South should be mined first. We will see that on the next couple of diagrams because there's a shallower overburden that leads to accelerated cash flow as opposed to Star, which has higher value diamonds, but particularly lower down in its sequence.

20:34 So if we start with Orion South, we then go to Star, obviously it has the best economy for future production. We unfortunately have fewer diamonds, and we must be cautious about making a go decision now on Orion South because we need to understand that diamond population a bit better, either taking an additional sample from Orion South, which we would like to avoid, or to show that there are enormous similarities in the diamond population of Orion South and Star, them being so close and tapping a similar mantle source. If we look at the annual and cumulative after-tax cash flows, we can see that these kimberlites produce money very quickly once they get over their payback period, and produce a huge amount of money as the production rolls forward.

21:41 If we look at the annual carrot production from the individual kimberlites in Orion South going first in the blue colors and then star in the red and yellow, you can see that we have managed to develop a seamless transition in the simulations for the PEA where we can move from the one deposit to the other with overburden stripping in time to go directly into mining and processing through a plant at a very high rate, some 45,000 tons per day. And again, a project of this nature with proximity to electrical power can have a very much lower carbon footprint than a remote project because the bucket wheel excavators, the loaders, the conveyors that move the ore from the pit to the autogenous mill, the whole of the processing plant, all of that can run on electrical power that is mostly hydroelectrically generated and obviously has a very low carbon footprint.

22:53 Kimberlite ores contain the mineral olivine which breaks down under atmospheric conditions and lo and behold it sequesters CO2 in the form of a carbonate. And so the mining of kimberlite ores leads to the sequestration of CO2. So there can be a very advantageous advantage in the future by mining these kimberlites. Rio Tinto, in their evaluation, using this very exotic trench cutter drill, it could cut a trench which was 3.2 by 1.5 meters rectangular to a depth of 250 meters below surface.

23:40 And there were 10 trench cutter holes that were sunk on the star kimberlite. These produced a vast quantity of 1,428 carats of diamonds. And you can see the differences between the underground bulk sampling, the large diameter drilling conducted by STAR and the trench cutter program conducted by Rio Tinto more recently. And you can see the grade estimates. Certainly the trench cutter confirms the results in terms of grade and size frequency distribution that we would see on these kimberlites. Rio Tinto built a large bulk sampling plant with state of the art recovery using

24:32 using HPGR, XRT sorting and a very narrow stream on the DMS, and had very, very good recoveries of diamonds. The work by Rio Tinto confirmed many of the statements made previously from the work of Star Diamond Corporation, and there's a whole list of those there. I won't go through them all in turn, but certainly the work that Rio did confirmed what we have been saying, and it has given great strength to the project. As I said, we could advance to doing some additional work on Iran South. We need to do some research on the diamond populations with great detail in the immediate short term, and obviously our intention is to update the feasibility study.

25:28 We now move on to the Buffalo Hills project, which we can see here indicated on this map of Canada in northern Alberta. Like the Fort Alicorn, this project is not far off paved highway. The closest road approach is 35 kilometres, which gets us to the K6 kimberlite.

25:50 There are some swampy conditions, but those can be dealt with by rig mats or winter exploration. But the supreme advantage of these kimberlites, which are much smaller bodies but have interesting diamonds, is that many of them, as Ewan has already stated, are on surface. So we have a number of leases that cover these bodies, as shown in these blue squares on this map. And there has been extensive reverse circulation drilling and core drilling conducted in the past with a lot of geophysics.

26:27 As you can see here, the K6 kimberlite, which contains some interesting yellow diamonds, and the course of size frequency distribution, shown with geologist Mark Schimmel in the foreground. And this is a pit that has been developed on surface.

26:47 Interestingly, we, as Ewan has alluded to in his introductory statements, we have done some valuation work which has shown interesting modelled prices, and note that there is a caution on the 185 and the 140 because of the size of these parcels, but certainly $160 a carat for a K14 is probably has some reasonable confidence in that. And notably that while these are not the same as the Fort LaCorde in their extreme abundance of type 2a's, they are certainly elevated with respect to the world average. And so there are some opportunities there in the Buffalo Hills. The company as we see it presently with Ewan as our CEO, Rick Johnson as our CFO, I have been with the company for almost 20 years, as has Mark Schimmel, the project manager. We have a very vast database of information and we are interested in getting a move on with this project and getting a mine ultimately into production.

27:58 Thank you. Well, thanks, George. Great presentation. And just as a summary, we continue in negotiations with Rio Tinto to get the 75% of the project they own back into our hands. And it is our plan once we get that back to have discussions with local stakeholders including the First Nations group and government bodies and financing partners to see if we can't move this forward. We believe that we may have to do another bulk sample as George has alluded to on Orion South if we want to get started. The advantage is they're much quicker to life of mine if we do that. So we could be looking at 2 to 3 years to get that feasibility out the door. But if that's the case, we will be sure and bound and determined that the mine can be developed.

28:48 And of course, Buffalo Hills is a surprise, very pleasant surprise to see type 2A in there and we're currently in discussions with how to move forward on that. So with that, I'll open it up to any questions you might have. Perfect. Thanks, Ewan. I'll try and direct this as best as possible. Here we have received quite a few questions and we can start with some pre-submitted questions we actually had and you kind of touched on Buffalo Hills, but why don't you further elaborate on the renewed interest in the Buffalo Hill project? Well, when we had a changeover of upper management, and I came into town and met with the team, and we had decided to have a look again at the Buffalo Hills diamonds, because no one had done anything in quite a while. And we had a couple of specialists in town looking at them, and lo and behold, if we didn't see some beautiful yellow diamonds there, and the team that was overlooking them in conjunction with the SRC

29:42 did a very detailed report and turned up anomalous Type IIa diamonds. And so this is actually quite rare. Type 2a diamonds don't occur many places. In fact, most of the mines in Canada don't have them at all. But because they are in Canada, these would all be diamonds that would qualify as being not blood diamonds. So we're quite interested in any possible source of diamonds as we go forward. And you know, Buffalo Hills is just one of those things that just kind of dropped out of nowhere.

30:15 Perfect. And there has been a lot of questions about Rio, so I'll try and ask them in the most logical way possible. But first, there's a question by Lance Elliot. What is Newmont's position on the project? Are they interested at all in further investing in the project? Have you recently secured any parties that are interested in investing in Star, as in financial institutions, governments, etc.? Well usually we reach out to Newmont once a year to ask them if they wouldn't mind voting in favour of management slate and stuff like that. But to my knowledge, Newmont is a world-leading precious metals mining company and have, to my knowledge, no interest in diamonds at this juncture.

31:00 Thank you. And I'll go with the next highest upvoted question here by Jared Bold. And I'll just read it exactly how he stated it. I heard Rio Tinto corporately are out of the diamond industry. If that is true, why don't they do the proper thing and give us our project back with a break fee, so they can be seen globally as a stand-up company that other junior miners want to work with. Right now, why would any junior want to work with Rio, given how they're dealing with Star?

31:31 More of a statement, I would say, than a question. Look, Jarrett, thanks for that. At the end of the day here, we're trying to move ahead with Rio and we're not exactly sure that we're going to come to a conclusion, but they have been very gracious with us and they are getting out of the project. I don't know about diamonds, you'd have talked a little bit about diamonds, but I can tell you right now they have no plans to build a diamond mine in Saskatchewan. So that's why we want the project back. Like I say, we did have the troubles with Rio earlier on, but that's all been taken care of now. The people we're dealing with are very respectful and we have a great relationship with them. It's simply a business transaction that we have to get ironed all out. And we're in the process of doing that. In fact, our last communications flurry was earlier this week. So I'm optimistic that in the near term, we will come to a resolution that our shareholders and stakeholders will all fully embrace.

32:34 Thank you. And based on Paul's question, is there a specific timeline? Is there any timeline that you could talk about? And is there any situation at all that there would be actionable steps toward court? Well, you know, we've been to court before and we know how that works. That's not the place to cut a deal. And like I say, we do have a good relationship with the Rio team. They are being receptive and I am hopeful that in the near term, we're going to come to a resolution that benefits everybody, including Rio and all of our stakeholders, because it's a crime for this mine not to get developed. This is one of the richest deposits in the world and the people of Saskatchewan and all the stakeholders in the area deserve the benefit of that.

33:22 So if you come to an agreement with Rio, would you be given privy access to all those drill results?

33:29 300 million spent should translate to a lot of new holes and results for our team to evaluate. This question was posed by Sheldon. Oh, well, great question, Sheldon. Very early on in the process, we discussed this with Rio and they have agreed to give us pretty much everything except for their diamond pricing model, which would be anti-competitive to show it to us. So we're going to see pretty much everything that's relevant.

33:56 Okay, thank you. And Timothy has a question here. Can Falcon be sold and shareholders get anything from that sale?

34:06 By Falcon, I would assume that—what is meant— The brand.

34:12 Sorry, what's that, Church? Rio Tinto patented the name Falcon Diamonds as a brand. I believe that's what they might be alluding to. Okay, okay. I'm not too familiar myself, so I'll move on. In any case, it's not our brand, So I wouldn't be able to answer that question. OK.

34:37 Peter is saying the presentation is impressive. So why is Rio passing on this? And I think you alluded to this, that they just don't want to be in Saskatchewan, Diamond mining? Well, thanks, Peter. And no, it's not what I said. They just don't want to develop this Greenfield project for some reason, which I'm not privy to. So what I can tell you is, and I think I mentioned this earlier, in March of 2022, I sat at a five-hour presentation in which over 16 Rio Tinto professionals around the world diffused about the project from possible mining scenarios to diamond grade to diamond size and to life of mine. So again, this is a massive corporation and this is probably not that big a deal for them. So I don't really know what the rationale is and it's not my privy to discuss that.

35:28 Okay. That makes sense. And thanks for the correction. And Doug has a question here. Where are the discussions with the First Nation groups?

35:37 Is the EIS permit in good stead?

35:43 Well, first of all, with respect to the First Nations groups, we have had preliminary discussions with them. The issue that we have, of course, is that we only own 25% of the project. So we don't really want to be what you might say bidding against ourselves, talking to other parties, affected parties and stakeholders when in fact we are not in any position to affect anything at all. So that's the issue we have. But as soon as we can get this project back, all those things will fall into place. With respect to the EIS, George? We're in good standing. Perfect. Perfect. And Sheldon wants to know, do we have enough money for 2023 or do we need to raise again this summer? Well, you know, it depends. It depends what we do and how we do it. So for instance, if we were to get the project back, it would be full speed ahead on that feasibility and the bulk work, which might require some sampling.

36:38 So I wouldn't be in a position to say, you know, for this year, but there will have to be money raised if we move ahead. There's no question about it. And also with respect to Buffalo Hills, we're gonna have discussions with our partner, Cantera, about their participation there. But that's an interesting project. We'd like to take a bulk sample out of that. And that's probably gonna cost 5 or 6 million bucks over the space of 2 years. And of course that would all be flow through stuff. So that's where we're at on those expenditure fronts. Again, Sheldon has a followup question. Is there any chance to partner with James Smith and the Saskatchewan government to move this amazing project forward? Well, you know, at the end of the day, that would be our intent. But like I said before, there's not much sense in us rolling out there and trying to cut deals with all these folks when we are not in control.

37:27 And I do not wish to set things up for possible competitors. We'll set it up for our shareholders. And at the relevant time, we will enter those negotiations. And I think we're gonna have a really good reception from everybody. Okay, let's see what question. There are federal permits and Sheldon wants to know when do the federal permits expire and what is the process to get them back if they do expire? Good question, George. I would, By permits, I would think he's referring to the EIS, which is in good standing. Obviously, if they're changing rules, we would have to update that. But in terms of the claims, and the claims are in good standing for more than 20 years.

38:17 And because of work completed to date, we also have a contiguous claim block so that those expenditures can be applied to all of the claims. Okay. And I'm actually just seeing Lance has a follow-up question, actually, in regards to the James Smith and Saskatchewan government. Have they expressed interest at all in partnering with STAR? Has there been any communication, if you're allowed to disclose? Well, clearly I wouldn't want to discuss privileged conversations, but there is a coming together in a meeting of the minds on this amongst local stakeholders, including the First Nations group. And I think everybody wants this to move forward because it's in everyone's best interest. And that's what I've been told. We haven't met with everyone directly because again, we don't control anything.

39:06 But that was certainly be our intent first out of the blocks. Thank you. And Lance has actually given his hat off to you. I'm impressed with what you're doing as an interim CEO there, Ewan. What is the status of hiring a new CEO? Well, thanks, Lance. I really get to really get praised in this job. But our plan all along has been to get the project back. And I like to call it, get on a mish. I want to be on a mission here. And that is to develop this as a mine. Once we get the project back, we will be looking for a new executive team. Because even though I'm a geologist and I've worked in the diamond business and I'm a financier and all that stuff. It's not my thing to put this together. There are people much better qualified out there and we're going to go and get one.

39:54 And circling back to Buffalo Hills, what is the average grade at BH? And this question was posed by Mike. George. Generally lower grade, 10 to 35 CPHT. Thank you, George. Let's see. Just don't wanna repeat myself here. Richard has a question here. Are we looking at share consolidation in the future? Well, I don't think so. Sorry. I don't think it's necessary. A number of companies in our situation, even more advanced, have more shares outstanding. It's not even something that's been discussed at the board.

40:41 I don't see that as something that will happen anytime soon. Is there any plans for a proper US stock listing? This is Richard that asked this question. Well you know, in an ideal world, yes, but we're trading by appointment right now. And the last thing we want to do is split it out over another exchange. So once we get this project back, once we get some funding to move it forward, that's something we should be looking at. So Peter has a question and it's, I don't know. Let me ignore that one here. Actually 1 2nd here. So Charles has a question. What is your desired capital infusion for full production? What would it take to get Rio out of the picture completely?

41:31 Would a capital infusion do it? Well, you know, if someone came along and gave us great terms on a couple of billion dollars, of course we would take that because that's what's required to develop the mine. What was the second part of that question? Let me find it here. About cash infusion, I lost it here 1 2nd. I archived it, I got to find it. We got a lot of questions. So I appreciate all the engagement on this panel. It's all right, guys. It's great, it's great. Well, why don't we just move on to something else, Kyle, and then if the viewer can resubmit that part of the question didn't answer, that'd be great. For sure, please do if you do, okay.

42:20 So does the current joint venture agreement give Rio a deadline to move the project off of care and maintenance? No, it does not. This one has 2 upvotes, but it's more, I'll leave it in your court there, you and how long do you expect it would take to get the share price back into the green for shareholders. And that's an arbitrary statement, obviously, because it depends when you bought the stock. That's right. Very, very subjective. However, I am expecting this year that we're going to be releasing positive news with respect to both the Falcon projects and Star Diamond, as well as Buffalo Hills Joint Venture. We're not sitting on our hands here.

43:11 We're ready to go. We just need to get past that final hurdle with Rio to get this project back and away we go. And I would expect that there will be a very positive reception from that. Okay. And Bernice is asking specifically, what is that biggest hurdle for getting the project back with Rio? Well, you know, that's a good question. We've been at it for some time and the change in direction was rapid. And So, you know, I suspect that internally Rio may be having, you know, it's not front of mat for them. It's not a project they're going to develop. But in any large corporation, I wouldn't think that projects that aren't going to get developed take the lion's share of executives' time deciding on its future.

44:05 So Paul posed a question, what do you mean if we get the project back? What other options are there? So let's say that it does take longer than expected for the Rio deal to solidify. What are the plans going forward? Well, as was publicly disclosed, Rio had embarked upon a program of seeking either a purchaser or a partner for work on Orion North. And so while in the near term, no interested parties surfaced. We do know that there are interested parties in this deposit. I just don't know what the status of their level of interest is and where they're at. So anything could happen. And we have had quite a few inbounds. We've actually met with a couple of companies that wanted to get an update on the status of the project from some of the most unlikely places. So this is just starting. This is not the end and we'll see how it goes.

44:57 Okay. Thank you. And Kevin has a good question here more related to the diamonds in the ground. You mentioned pink diamonds. So for an individual like me that doesn't know much about the diamond industry, maybe elaborate on the value of pink diamonds. And has there been any recovered? And if so, what size? This is best directed to George, I think. Pink diamonds are extremely rare. And as a consequence, they can have dollar per carat values that have exceeded 1 million dollars a carat for the cut and polished goods. So they can have extreme values, but they are rare. The principal source of pinks until the recent past was Rio Tinto's Argyle Mine in Australia, and the rule of thumb there was that it produced about 6 reasonable pinks for every million stones recovered. So even while Argyle was a big pink producer, it still didn't produce that many, but there were a steady stream. There have been some good pinks from both Karowi in Botswana and Letsang in Lesotho, And there are pinks that come out of Brazil and out of elsewhere in Southern Africa.

46:09 We had some very pale pinks in our initial parcel, but not anything we can get excited about yet. There is 1 pale blue diamond, which again has also got appreciable value, but we can't base anything on this. But the abundance of the type twos strongly suggests that in future mine production, we should see some pink diamonds. I think that's as bold as I can get in the statement. Perfect. Thank you, Judge. Appreciate that. And Mike has a question here, and I can't verify the accuracy of it as we are live. 99% of the claims in the property are registered 100% to Rio Tinto. How does that work with a 75% to 25% split? It's irrelevant. The joint venture controls the project with respect to 75% in favour of Rio and 25% in favour of us. So, George, do you have any additional comment there?

47:13 That's the way that the Saskatchewan Mars database, claim database works. It's the operator and the majority shareholder comes first and foremost. But the claim, the holding of the project is 25 to Star Diamond Corporation and 75 to Rio Tinto. Bernice is wondering if you've sold any of the diamonds that were recovered from the sampling programs? If so, where are they sold? No, we haven't sold any, but George, if you can give a little background on where some of them have gone. So the diamonds have, normally with a kimberlite, the evaluation parcel is kept in perpetuity. And then you can measure future production against your valuation. And you can perfect your methods.

48:03 There was, interestingly, quite a few years ago, a selection of these diamonds. I think there were 160-something stones that were cut and polished and provided to the province of Saskatchewan for inclusion in the Black Rod, which is a commemorative artifact that leads the procession into the house in the government of Saskatchewan. So there are diamonds that have been put into that. There are some diamonds, very small diamonds, that have been looked at at the University of Alberta for understanding diamond inclusions, to understand the genesis of these diamonds. But other than that, the entire parcel is in a bank in Saskatchewan.

48:56 Thank you for that, George. And Tim actually has another question for you. If you could comment on the changes in the world supply of diamonds, what is the general understanding of projects coming online elsewhere? I could, but I'll put it over to George because he's the expert. There is a general decline in the abundance of natural rough. I think people have been talking about this for years, but I would like to think it is a reality. There are mines in Angola that will come on stream. There is obviously a huge question mark over diamonds coming out of Russia, and there are significant limitations being put on that supply. Russia is a very big producer of rough.

49:45 And I think, and then there are also synthetic diamonds that have a significant place at the lower end of the market. Some people like the idea of synthetics, but De Beers has a company called Lightbox, driven by the producer Element 6, that creates a separate stream of synthetic goods. And there is significant price differentiation between cheaper synthetics and very much more expensive natural rough. And there is a great effort in the diamond business to keep those 2 streams separate. Thank you, George. And Peter has a question about Rio again.

50:30 Is Rio on the hook for any obligations from the current JV with respect to paying for the feasibility study? The answer to that is no. The current JV is a matter of public record and contains several waterfall levels. And what it does require is that in the absence of a feasibility study and in the absence of a positive mine decision and a positive mine decision with a sizable mine, Rio Tinto is exclusively on the hook for all expenditures over the next, I think it's 20 years. So that's about all I can say about that. Thank you. And my apologies if you've already answered this question, but Peter posed another question. Can you say if there's any interest in this project outside of our current JV partner?

51:19 You know that's a that's a difficult question to answer because you know what I can say is there are people interested in this project everywhere. It's just a matter of us being able to package it up for a viable business project. And of course, right now, the way things are with Rio, that's a little difficult. So we need to get past that hurdle and I think that's going to happen soon. Thank you. And I personally have a general question about the diamond industry, because it's rather new to me. We've seen the price of Gold and Silver move lately. What affects the supply demand economics for the diamond industry? Or is it just about the quality of the diamond itself? Like the underlying commodity price of a diamond?

52:09 I'm rather new with this. George? Diamond prices move in unusual ways, if I can say that. But the past few years have been very good. And certainly, the Canadian diamond mines, specifically Octa Canadian Diamond Company and Gatra Cuei. They have had very good years recently. Their prices became very high during the pandemic in 2021 going into 2022, and those prices are still good. There are still some interesting record prices coming out. I was on a conversation to somebody from London just earlier this week and they were saying that the smalls are commanding very high prices. So interesting how it works. And the diamond market is a complicated place, if I could think that's an understatement.

53:13 But certainly the prices presently of natural rough are generally very good. Thank you. And another more macro question posed by Eugene. Does the apparent devalued US dollar help or hinder future mine planning? Well, I'll tell you more so than that has been the rise of inflation. I think inflation is a problem for new mine construction. Not so much the US dollar, but certainly it's been problematic. In our case, I think it may be a slight positive, but again, we're nowhere near that at this point. So I comment to you on it is probably, you know, not that wise.

54:00 Fair enough. This is an interesting question posed by Jarrett. Has there been any work on carbon credits like De Beers does on the carbon vault, making this mine a 0 carbon emission mine, and told that when kimberlite comes to surface, it sucks up a lot of CO2? Hey, look, great question, Jarrett. And there has been work done by real engaged, I think, a couple of professors. George, what university was that at? It was in Edmonton, I think. Edmonton. Yeah. And so the concept of carbon captured by all of the minerals, in particular Kimberlite, is first and foremost with us. We are going to be doing some work on that because it seems as though if we move forward with this, this could be a 0 emission project, which is stunning in the extreme for a mining project, particularly if we use electric vehicles and issues like that. So there's so much to do here that's good.

54:50 And I would actually want to comment on someone else just put a comment up, interesting comment that said, your comment about a crime not to get developed is true, just like the Ring of Fire in Ontario. And I can tell you right now point blank that both of these projects are game changers for the provinces in which they're located in, and particularly Saskatchewan, you know, 25 to $40 billion of cash flow coming out of just the one pipe is astronomical. And our local stakeholders, the First Nations people have all been primed to make this work. And we are really looking forward to getting this back and having them and the government as partners to move this forward because it needs to happen. It's just, it's a gift. Thank you. And Sheldon has a question here.

55:39 He said people, and I'm not sure which individuals, have talked about a spot in Star or Orion South that the kimberlite is very close to surface. Can we build a shaft and put kimberlite on a conveyor up to surface and put through the processing plant that Rio left us? Short answer is no, but George. That would be a delightful situation, but unfortunately it doesn't exist. The closest kimberlite to surface at Starr is at about 135 metres below surface. On Orion South, it's at 100 and it goes from overlying till into good paying kimberlite, which is very advantageous. That's why we want to start mining on Orion South. On Orion North, the overburden thickness is perhaps as low as 90, but that's still quite a long way.

56:32 But that makes Orion North, it adds interest to it. And there is a very high proportion again of type IIa's in the samples that we have to date from Orion North. Thank you George. And the vast volume of ore in Orion North, potential ore. Now unfortunately that's all the time we have for questions today. I want to thank you, Ewan and George for taking the time to go through this great presentation and the Q&A session. It's great to have all the engagement. A lot of questions and I'm sorry if I missed any of them. If I did miss any of them, please fill out the survey in the chat and the team at Stardiamond could get back to you. If not, they will be appearing on other 6 events, so we can do that as well.

57:20 Today's recording will also be available to watch on demand in the coming days, so feel free to look out for that. You can find more information at Star Diamond by going to their website, stardiamondcorp.com. Thanks everyone again involved for making this event successful. I hope you all have a good day. Thank you. Thanks