The Shefa Yamim company has been prospecting for diamonds in Israel's Kishon River since 1999. In the coming months, the firm is seeking to issue $100 million worth of stock. This is a new and different approach, since fundraising for diamond companies – especially Israeli ones – is done via banks and going public has never been an option.

According to TheMarker.com, The story of Shefa Yamim began in 1988, when Haifa's then-mayor, Arie Goral, traveled to New York to meet with the Lubavitcher rabbi who was the seventh Chabad admor and considered by many to be the Messiah, but has since passed away. The rabbi gave Goral a tip: "Haifa sits on the sea, and one shouldn't be impressed by depth. Haifa has a sea, and it has a valley, and the valley contains good and precious stones. The Lord has done something miraculous: he has hidden the stones deep in the earth, and it looks like they're deep in the river."

The 86-year-old rabbi's mention of "good stones" sparked considerable interest among the Chabad hassidim. They accepted it as prophecy, and decided to devote their time and money to finding the buried treasure.

The founder and CEO of Shefa Yamim is Avraham "Avi" Taub, who comes from a family of diamond dealers and worked his whole life polishing an selling diamonds. Sources close to Taub said he was so close to the rabbi that he decided to leave everything and devote his life to Shefa Yamim. In the early 1990s, the Lubavitcher rabbi instructed Taub to mine diamonds, which together with the prophecy, prompted Taub to found Shefa Yamim. The company took out mining licenses for the Zevulun Valley and Mount Carmel areas and began searching.

First name? Kalish, a former IAF pilot who found religion, is one of the more colorful and well-known figures in Israeli high-tech. In 2007 Forbes named him the best local venture capitalist. But he has also known some failures. 

Shefa Yamim employs dozens of workers and two vehicles. The company has some 200 stockholders, most of whom own shares in the company. The main stockholders are Eight Global Corp. (42.33%) and the Taub family's 101 Zahav Holdings (7.2%), which also has a number of other companies in the diamond, gold mining, and precious stones industries.

Thus far, some $10 million has been raised from private investors, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. In recent weeks Shefa Yamim has been busy preparing a draft prospectus for the securities authorities ahead of the stock issue. This isn't the first time Shefa Yamim has tried to issue stock. Before the global financial crisis took hold, the company tried to issue stock on London's AIM exchange but then reversed the decision. Right now, the worth of the company is a sticking point – Shefa Yamim wants to issue stock based on the $100 million valuation by Mount Morgan Resources.

The signatories doubt whether they will be able to raise money based on a $100 million company valuation, and a source said that "if the company had been interested in raising money based on a value of nothing, we would have taken the opportunity."

Shefa Yamim is the first and only company prospecting for precious stones in Israel. Anyone reviewing the history of searches for gold and gemstones in the Holy Land will see that searches for gold were conducted in the Eilat area, but called off. The company operates under the mining regulations of the National Infrastructures Ministry, and unlike companies prospecting for oil or natural gas – established as cooperative ventures – does not receive any reduction in income tax.

Over the past 11 years, the company has conducted a number of exploratory drills, which did not reveal the promised wealth, but turned up a number of other interesting things. In 2004 a kimberlite boulder was discovered on Mount Carmel. The De Beers syndicate took the rock to its laboratories, cut it open, and discovered micro-diamonds.

Shefa Yamim has discovered 76 diamonds, mostly micro-diamonds, and 14 kimberlite boulders. In addition, a few other precious stones – sapphires, rubies, emeralds, kainite, and corundrum. At the moment the company is not drilling, and the next plan is to drill into the kimberlite layer.

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Tel-Aviv – The Intersessional Meeting of the Kimberley Process (KP), presided over by Israel as Chair of the KP, has concluded today June 24th. On the agenda of the meeting were a number of initiatives relating to the on-going work of the KP and to the consolidation of the process such the creation of an office for administration and support and the establishment of a Working Group on Trade Facilitation.

The center of attention, however, was the KP minimum standards implementation in the Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe. The meeting convened in light of the second report of the KP monitor to Zimbabwe. In question was the continued implementation of the Joint Work Plan (JWP), agreed upon at the Plenary meeting in Swakopmund, Namibia in November 2009. The meeting was clouded by the arrest of NGO activist Farai Mguwu by the Zimbabwean authorities three weeks earlier and the reports of his condition.

The Intersessional could not reach consensus regarding the implementation of the JWP and the work carried out by the KP Monitor to Marange. As such, the meeting ended at an impasse. The KP Chair, Mr. Boaz Hirsch, has declared an impasse after night long discussions through the morning and called for another a meeting to attempt to resolve the differences followed by an extension to the Intersessional.

Mr. Hirsch, along with the Chair of the Working-Group on Monitoring, Mr. Stephane Chardon and Mr. Eli Izhakoff, President of the World Diamond Council (WDC), played a pivotal role in attempting to breach the gap between the sides. "This situation is unprecedented in the Kimberley Process meeting," declared the Chair, "but all parties are committed to further engagement. The KP is based on a partnership between governments, the diamond industry and the civil society.

I am committed to that end and I have asked Mr. Izhakoff to jointly convene within the WDC Annual Meeting coming July 14th-15th, in St. Petersburg, a mini-summit of the KP major stakeholders. Deliberations will continue in order to find a consensus based resolution." Israel will host the Plenary meeting in Jerusalem between the 1st and 4th of November of
this year.

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The Kimberley Process Intersessional meeting, due to end in Tel Aviv on June 23, has yet to conclude as discussions continue over the issue of Zimbabwe’s diamond exports. Guests from more than 27 countries attended the conference.

Following a lively debate during a session that was due to conclude the Intersessional, participants from the Working Group on Monitoring held a closed session to try to reach consensus. The session continued through the night and ended at 7am arriving at no consensus.

Deliberations are expected to continue later today. One of the participants in the closed door session described the meeting as ‘taking one step forward then two steps back’.

The Kimberley Process Report on Marange by monitor Abbey Chikane following his recent trip to Zimbabwe concluded that the country had reached the minimum standards of compliance with the Kimberley Process rough diamond certification scheme.

While the majority of countries participating in the Kimberley Process expressed support for Chikane’s submission, a number of countries and civil society participants objected to the concept that Zimbabwe would immediately commence exporting diamonds from Marange.

Swaziland   - Another Possible Candidate

Her Royal Highness Princess Tsandzile Dlamini of Swaziland, who acts as Minister of Natural Resources and Energy, has granted IDI a short interview, while attending the Kimberley Process intersessional meeting in Tel Aviv.

Though Swaziland has no diamond production, HRH Dlamini said her country's role in the diamond industry, "Is to facilitate and ensure a conducive environment for (diamond) production, and the compliance with the minimum KP standards is created and sustained."

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