Conroy Diamonds slightly narrows its half year losses

IRISH gold and precious metals exploration company Conroy Diamonds & Gold has marginally narrowed its half-year losses, for the six months to the end of November, to €183,126 from €202,464 for the same period in the previous year.

The company’s chairman Professor Richard Conroy said that the six-month period had resulted in the Clay Lake gold asset in Co Armagh showing post-sampling study results of the highest gold-in-soil values ever recorded in any of the company’s Irish-based exploration licences.

“We’re now moving beyond the exploration phase at Clontibret [the company’s Co Monaghan-based licence] and Wardrop Engineering has commenced a scoping study to determine if the current resource of just over one million ounces of gold can support a profitable mining operation,” Prof Conroy said.

“We’re also making excellent progress at Clay Lake, with impressive first drilling results, whilst the discovery of a very large zinc-in-soil anomaly south-east of Clontibret brings a new dimension to our activities in this area. However, our prime focus remains the delineation and development of our gold projects with the 30 mile long gold trend we have identified,” he added.

Meanwhile, Karelian Diamond Resources – the AIM and IEX-listed offshoot of Conroy Diamonds, which focuses solely on the Finland market – also reported a narrowing of first half losses yesterday, down (year-on-year) from €112,612 to €83,636.

“Although the demand for both rough diamonds and jewellery is showing signs of recovery, investor interest in junior explorers remains quite flat. Under such circumstances, we have decided to limit the amount of expensive drilling and micro-diamond sampling work we undertake in order to conserve our resources,” added Prof Conroy, who is chairman of both companies.