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BK11 mine (90% interest)

The BK11 kimberlite mine is located in the Orapa kimberlite field in northern Botswana.

BK11 is located approximately 7 kilometres north-west and 20 kilometres south-east of De Beers' Letlhakane and Orapa mines, respectively, and is within 5 kilometres of the proposed new mine at AK6. The surface area of BK11 is estimated to be 8 hectares, and overburden is shallow at less than 20 metres.

Firestone was granted a prospecting licence in 2007 and in less than three years the Company has explored and developed the project into the production stages including successfully constructing the project in less than nine months after the decision to proceed with the mine development.

Phase 1 of the BK11 production plant, which has a capacity of approximately 650,000 tonnes per annum, commenced in August 2010. Shipments of diamond concentrates have commenced from BK11 to the Company's diamond sorting facility in Gaborone. Initial diamond recoveries have been very encouraging, including a high quality 13.74 carat diamond, the largest recovered to date from BK11.

Work on Phase 2 of the production plant, which will increase production capacity to 1,500,000 tonnes per annum, is on target for completion in Q4 2010. Under the BK11 mine plan approximately 11.1 Mt of kimberlite is expected to be mined at an average grade of 8.5 cpht, giving total production of approximately 1 million carats over a 10 year mine life at an average value of $155/carat (March 2010 valuation). Initial mining operations will be focused on the KW area, where approximately 5.4 Mt of kimberlite is expected to be mined at an average grade of 12.6 cpht, and at a diamond value of $175/carat (March 2010 valuation).

The Company intends to use cash flow from BK11 to accelerate the evaluation of its other kimberlites in Botswana. The primary focus of these efforts will initially concentrate on the 21 other kimberlites controlled by Firestone in the Orapa kimberlite field close to the BK11 mine, of which 8 have been proven to be diamondiferous. Firestone intends to use the infrastructure that has now been established at BK11 to evaluate the economic potential of these kimberlites rapidly and at relatively low cost. The Firestone Directors believe that Firestone has the potential to develop a sizeable satellite mining operation based around BK11 and multiple other kimberlites in the Orapa area. Of these, the BK16 kimberlite is at the most advanced stage of evaluation, with high quality diamonds and encouraging grades recovered from historical work, and is expected to be the first of the satellite kimberlites to be evaluated for commercial mining.

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