Petra Diamonds said today that, as previously announced, its Founder and Chairman Adonis Pouroulis stepped down from the Board of Directors with Peter Hill, Non-Executive Director and Chairman-designate since December 2019 taking over the responsibility.

The succession, though planned earlier, comes a few days after the Company said in an unrelated statement that “given the continued uncertainty around the outlook for control of the COVID-19 in South Africa, FY 2020 production guidance of 3.8 million carats is suspended until the Company is in a better position to quantify the full impact of the lockdown”.

Last week Petra had announced that in order to give priority to “the health, safety and wellbeing of all its people”, and implement government curbs during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, it had scaled down to operate at a minimum level in order to maintain the underground block caves at its mines in South Africa.

It further said it was confident that it will be possible to ramp the operations back up to steady state production levels within a relatively short timeframe after the lockdown restrictions are lifted.

Petra also said that its open-pit Williamson mine in Tanzania, which is in a remote location in the Shinyanga province, remains in full operation but is being managed in strict accordance with the new procedures outlined by the respective authorities.

The Company said that discussions with the Government of Tanzania in relation to various issues, including the overdue VAT receivables and the blocked diamond parcel, are ongoing but have been interrupted by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Petra also stated that its fifth diamond sale of FY 2020, with tenders in both South Africa and Antwerp, which was to run from March 19-26, had to be prematurely closed – on March 23 in South Africa and on March 24 in Antwerp.

The company reported that “during this constrained sales period, (we) saw severely depressed and opportunistic bidding for its goods, particularly in the larger size and higher quality, greater value categories. As a result, Petra chose to sell a portion of its South African goods, representing ca. 75% by volume and ca. 50% by value. These goods saw price decreases of ca. 24% on a like-for-like basis in comparison to pricing achieved at the February 2020 sales cycle. The remaining goods were exported to Antwerp and will be offered for sale when market conditions allow”.

Similarly, it said that with regards to the Antwerp tender of Tanzanian goods “the vast majority of the goods were sold, with only a few strategic, higher-value parcels being withheld, and pricing achieved was on a similar level to that in South Africa”.

Petra said that it had two further sales planned in the current financial year, “but the outlook for both sales is highly uncertain and will depend on travel and export conditions at the time, as well as activity levels in the key diamond buying centres, being India, Israel, China and the US”.

The company continues to closely monitor and manage its liquidity risk with regular cash forecasts being produced and run for different scenarios, including the potential impact of protracted production shutdowns and uncertainty around diamond sales in the short-term. In light of this, it is in active discussions with its South African lender group, which remains supportive of the Company, in relation to the provision of near-term liquidity, and also engaged with the Group's financial stakeholders in relation to the implications of the unprecedented operating and trading environment, Petra stated.

Richard Duffy, CEO of Petra Diamonds, commented: “We are taking all actions necessary to support the measures to limit the outbreak of the COVID-19 in the countries in which we operate and to decrease the threat to our employees, contractors and other local stakeholders. While Petra has been running well operationally, with production ahead of guidance, the scaled down mining operations and sales disruptions will cause a negative impact in the short-term. However, we have the foundations in place to continue to deliver long-term, sustainable operations and we remain committed to protecting their ongoing viability, to the benefit of all our stakeholders.”