Mission: To create Africa’s next mid-tier diamond producer
Assets: More than a decade of experience with De Beers and the financial backing of the Lundin Group
Yield: A startup with two highly-prospective diamond assets, one of which is already producing gems
By Joel McKay
William Lamb has a thick South African accent and a rapid, almost ambitious way of talking that makes it a challenge for even the best listeners to keep up with him.
“His brain goes faster than his mouth,” laughed Lukas Lundin, co-head of the Lundin Group of Companies and chairman of Lucara Diamond Corp. (TSX-V:LUC).
But you might want to take the time to sit and listen.
With more than a decade’s worth of experience at mining giant De Beers, Lamb is one of the few people in the world who truly understands the diamond business.
These days, the 39-year-old native of Johannesburg has an office on West Georgia where he and a tight-knit group of executives are busy creating Africa’s next mid-tier diamond producer.
The company is Lucara, and Lamb, who is president and CEO, has spent much of his recent life jet-setting around the world selling his story to investors.
During a one-week sales pitch in Europe last month, Lamb made stops in Dublin, London, Frankfurt, Stockholm and Geneva.
What’s he selling?
A story about two highly prospective diamond projects in Botswana and Lesotho, one that’s a former De Beers asset and another that produced an extremely rare 53.5-carat Type IIA diamond in its first week of production.
In a recent interview with Business in Vancouver, Lamb said he believes Lucara has the expertise and the rocks to become a real mining company, a rarity among Vancouver’s host of junior exploration ventures.
Being a member of the vastly successful Lundin Group doesn’t hurt either.
“There are so many little companies that go out and raise $6,000 here and $400,000 there … Lucara didn’t want to do that,” Lamb explained. “We would rather be the developer of choice … having the financial strength of the Lundin Group as a backer does enable us to move very, very quickly on things.”
In October, the company announced plans to buy 40% of De Beers’ former AK6 project in Botswana from African Diamonds plc.
The move would give Lucara 100% control of the project for $72.3 million – a deal Lamb said would have been hard to pull off were it not for the Lundin Group.
“I was speaking to James Campbell, the managing director for African Diamonds, on a completely unrelated topic and I said, ‘How are things going on AK6?’ He said, ‘do you have $42 million?’ I said, ‘Hang on a second.’
“Lukas has an office next door to mine and I said, ‘Lukas can you get me a bank guarantee in the form De Beers wants for $42 million?’ It took a day and a half.”
Lamb’s adventures in the mining business began decades ago in South Africa where his father was a white-collar purchaser for Rand Mines.
That family connection exposed Lamb to a business that was both worldwide and appealed to his ambitious nature. At 17, he cut his teeth at Rand while studying metallurgy at the University of Johannesburg.
“It was a very opportune time,” he said. “Rand Mines was then the second or third largest company in South Africa. They had vanadium and coal and chrome and platinum … by the time I finished fourth year I had already spent time on 14 different operations.”
After university he spent two years with Rand as a senior plant metallurgist, but quickly became bored.
“I was finished my work by 10 o’clock in the morning and I would have to go out and find things to do. You know what they say about idle hands,” Lamb added with a chuckle. “So I resigned.”
Then came De Beers, where for more than a decade he learned the ins and outs of the gem business from the world’s largest diamond producer.
Meanwhile, 50- and 60-hour workweeks weren’t enough for Lamb.
He decided to become a duathlon and triathlon racer, sticking with it even though his first race didn’t go that well.
“I walked my bicycle up the hills because I cramped so badly, it was atrocious,” Lamb said. “Yet I had perseverance because it was what I wanted to do and, eventually, I finished fifth at world champs.”
His De Beers’ career eventually brought him to Canada where the company operates mines in the Northwest Territories and Ontario.
Lamb quickly learned that Canada’s massive mining industry had more to offer in terms of career advancement than South Africa.
In early 2008, he made a visit to Vancouver. During a breakfast meeting, discussion turned to a fledgling diamond company the Lundin Group was putting together.
The company piqued Lamb’s interest and he found the West Coast’s balmy climate hard to ignore.
“I had breakfast and Lukas popped in in shorts and a T-shirt on the way to the gym. Shorts and a T-shirt in January? I’m thinking, ‘In Toronto you’d be a popsicle.’”
A few months later, he joined Lucara as general manager.
Lundin said the first thing he noticed about Lamb was his energy and drive to get the job done.
“He’s very smart and ambitious, and he knows the diamond business,” Lundin said. “There’s not that many people [that do].”
In 2009, Lamb replaced Lundin as president and this year became CEO.In that time, Lucara has consolidated its ownership of the Mothae diamond project in Lesotho, acquired AK6, raised $110 million and started producing diamonds at Mothae.
The company estimates that AK6 has an indicated resource of 51 million tonnes containing 8.2 million carats of diamond. Lamb said the project will cost US$120 million to build and is expected to begin production in 2012.
Meanwhile, at Mothae, the company is in a trial mining phase that’s designed to reveal the true value of the diamonds in the ground.
Lamb hopes the quality of his diamonds will meet China’s rising demand for gems, and even though Lucara is well on its way to production he has no plans to slow down.
His ambition won’t let him.
“I think if we get a defined resource, and we’re busy doing the final studies at the Mothae mine and we’re producing at AK6, I might think about taking a break,” he said. “But to me it’s part of the Lundin culture. You don’t stop to take a breath, you just continue.”