Tsavorite is a brilliant green gemstone variety of grossular garnet. Introduced to the world in the 1970s, Tiffany & Co named and marketed the gems around the world. Beautiful, rare and desirable, tsavorite continues to be demanded by discerning jewellery connoisseurs worldwide.

The Richland Tsavorite Project is located 20km from the Company’s producing Tanzanite mine.

The tsavorite exploration programme focuses on locating and defining alluvial, paleo-alluvial and hardrock sources of green garnet (tsavorite) and other associated minerals of gem quality.

Recent resource study activities conducted a total of 164 drill holes (with a combined depth of 3,180m) and comprised 6 inch rotary air blast (“RAB”) and down hole hammer drilling to determine the volume of gravels. The average depth of the holes was 19m. The drill profiles were logged and supported by heavy mineral sampling at 1.5 metre intervals resulting in 2,100 heavy mineral samples. A 32 tonne excavator with a 6-metre reach was used to conduct a bulk sampling exercise. The material was loaded into a 10 tonne tipper with 1 sample of 5 cubic metres per truckload for individual treatment. The treatment plant consists of a primary dry screening module with screened product between -12mm and +2mm being fed to a wet Bushman jig capable of treating two 5 cubic metre batch samples per day. A total of 26 samples were taken and processed resulting in a total sample size of approximately 312 tonnes.

As a result of the 2010 tsavorite work programme a Maiden JORC compliant Inferred Resource of 7.6 to 10.4 million bank cubic metres (“bcm”) or approximately 18.2 to 24.9 million tonnes and a Maiden JORC compliant Indicated Resource of 0.89 to 2.17 million bcm or approximately 2.1 to 5.2 million tonnes located within Inferred Resource, was established and announced on the 10th of January 2011.

Hardrock exploration has included prospective mapping and pitting of most areas of the project tenement package. About 245 location points were visited and documented during the mapping program with best geological signatures identified and a follow-up by pitting conducted.

Richland is currently constructing a larger processing plant for the next phase of the tsavorite project at its TanzaniteOne Mining engineering facilities.