Arctic Star Exploration Corp. recently appointed Roy Spencer, a Director of the Company,  to the newly created position of Country Manager for Finland. He will manage the Company’s exploration activity on its newly acquired Timantti Diamond Project that lies within the highly prospective Karelian Craton, the Company stated.

“Roy’s extensive background working within the Karelian Craton includes leading the discovery of the Grib diamond mine that generated revenue of US$ 340 million  in 2016, and is the 8th largest diamond mine in the world,” Arctic Star said.

The Company stressed that Spencer brings “over 40 years of diamond exploration and discovery success to Arctic Star”.

Once part of De Beers, which he joined in 1966, Spencer, as Leader of the Owners Team for Archangel Diamond Corporation has been credited with being “largely responsible for the discovery of the world class Grib kimberlite in far northern Russia in February 1996”.

Later, as Technical Director of Peregrine Diamonds, he discovered the first kimberlites on the Pilbara craton in Western Australia in 1989.

“In 1998, Roy created and raised the seed finance for Ilmari Exploration Oy to explore for gold, base metals and diamonds on the Karelian Craton in Finland,” Arctic Star said. “Ilmari went public in 2000, and discovered the Lentiira kimberlite cluster in central Finland in 2003.”

His other notable achievement was when in 2006, as CEO of London-based diamond explorer European Diamonds, he led the Owners Team which brought the Liqhobong kimberlite in Lesotho into commercial production “on time and under budget”. Spencer left European Diamonds in mid-2007, after  seeing it evolve into a successful mid-tier diamond producer and marketer.

Since then, Spencer  continues to be involved in exploration and deposit evaluation for  projects in  Africa, Finland and western Russia with  a variety of junior and senior mining companies.

Spencer stated, “Having worked extensively in the Karelian Craton throughout my career, I am excited to begin our exploration programme at the highly-advanced Timantti project, where we have begun ground geophysics followed by drilling.”