Rockwell Diamonds CEO James Campbell to Step Down

(IDEX Online) – Rockwell Diamonds Inc. announces that James Campbell, the Chief Executive Officer, has tendered his resignation and, in an unrelated development, that Stephen Dietrich and Rick Menell have also resigned as directors.

The board undertook a strategic review on August 28 by means of a special board committee, the miner said. The goal was to evaluate the positioning of Rockwell in the diamond mining space, as well as the effectiveness of defined strategies that were implemented over the past period by the company.

This review included the performance of its Remhoogte acquisition, which has been below plan, and the construction of the new Wouterspan plant that is behind schedule with a higher cost. Notwithstanding this, the first phase of the wet plant at Wouterspan, being the first two of four circuits, is substantially complete and diamond grades are in line with expectations.

The board also carried out a management review following the recent exit of two senior managers. The board determined that further intervention on operations and plant completion was necessary, while new opportunities are being assessed.

James Campbell has tendered his resignation and agreed on a structured handover before leaving at the end of November 2016 as per his employment contract, Rockwell said. He will also remain a director of the company, working closely with the board and the newly appointed Executive Officer Tjaart Willemse. Tjaart will assume chief executive authority for day to day operations and plant completion, reporting to the Chairman of the board.

Tjaart is a mining engineer with 25 years of senior operational, production and executive management experience, particularly in operating plants in the diamond industry with De Beers in South Africa. Tjaart will also work with the board to continue the review of the company’s management structures and operating plans going forward.

As part of this review, the board structure will also change to accommodate the resignation of two non-executive directors: Stephen Dietrich for personal health reasons and Rick Menell for reasons relating to his already demanding schedule. They will be replaced by the appointment of Richard Mhlontlo who will represent Rockwell’s Black Economic Empowerment (‘BEE’) shareholder. Richard was previously the Group Human Resource and Industrial Relations Manager for Rockwell.