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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Tuesday was a weak 63-120-127 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell four points to 572. Wes Roberts's halted Golden Share Resources Corp. (GSH: $0.045) and its reverse takeover target, Ken Johnson's Brazil-based Lipari Diamond Mines Ltd., have missed their end-of-March deadline for completing their merger. Not to worry -- at least do not lose too much sleep yet -- as Mr. Johnson's company still touts its bid to go public in a way that sounds essentially like a done deal.

Mr. Johnson, who will remain president and chief executive officer of the merged company, continues to tout the Tchitengo project in Angola as the flagship play, although that ship has yet to set sail. Meanwhile, the still private Lipari is plugging away successfully with its Brauna diamond mine in Bahia, Brazil, which it hopes to keep in production for several more years by moving underground.

Brauna was a key promotion 20 years ago, when the then Toronto-based Mr. Johnson was running Vaaldiam Resources Ltd. Like many a diamond promoter, he met with failure during and in the wake of the Great Recession, as Vaaldiam succumbed to two waves of insolvency. No matter -- Mr. Johnson left Bay Street for Brazil, where he and a new group of backers successfully got the Brauna kimberlite pipe into production in mid-2016 through Lipari, at the bargain-basement cost of $65-million (U.S.).

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