Johannesburg - Petra Diamonds, the prospecting company listed on the alternative investment market, said yesterday its prospects of securing the 51 percent stake in Alexkor remained good.
It has teamed up with five empowerment groups as Dimeng Diamond Holdings to bid for the state-owned diamond company.
Dimeng is one of the four companies short-listed for Alexkor's privatisation, delayed by the government earlier this month because of a community land claim.
Adonis Pouroulis, the chief executive of Petra Diamonds, said: "We are obviously disappointed with the delay, but we believe our bid is competitive and our prospects of securing the 51 percent of Alexkor remain strong."
Alexkor, which has been plagued by claims of mismanagement and financial strains, produces between 10 percent and 15 percent of South Africa's annual gem-quality diamonds.
Petra holds a 41 percent stake in the Dimeng consortium and has already had a taste of the challenges at Alexkor through its 29.5 percent interest in Nabera Mining, the empowerment company that managed Alexkor for two years up until May 2001.
While trying to resolve the dispute with the community out of court, the department of public enterprises said Alexkor's strategic equity partner would be selected after finality on the Richtersveld community's land claim.
The constitutional court is scheduled to hear an application in this regard in September. In the meantime, Petra has diversified its business away from its historic focus on diamond exploration.
The company said last month it was buying 6km of land in the Platreef region of the Limpopo Province's Bushveld Complex, host to the world's largest platinum deposit. Besides platinum group metals, Platreef is a significant carrier of anomalous copper and nickel sulphides.
In a trading statement issued on Monday, Petra said it had firmed up its Angolan prospects.
The restarting of exploration at the Alto Cuilo concession in northern Angola had yielded three new diamondiferous kimberlite ore bodies that would need to be established as economically viable before any mining could begin.