Pasadena-based Company Granted Permit by Brazilian Government to Mine Diamonds, Gold

Pasadena-based Brazil Minerals, Inc. (BMIX) has obtained a permit from the Brazilian government to start mining diamonds and gold in one of its mineral rights areas for an initial four years.

Much of the mining work will be done by BMIX subsidiary RST Recursos Minerais Ltda., which continues to drill and research additional locations within what is considered a large mineral rights area.

BMIX Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Marc Fogassa, a long-time Pasadena resident, said much of the preparatory ground work at the site will have to be done in 30 days, and relates in detail what needs to be done before actual mining starts.

“What we’re doing is we’re going to spend up to 30 days cleaning up some of cowl from overgrowth,” Fogassa said. “There are really no trees there, it’s really grass. And it’s cleaning up a little bit, having the road redone with our bulldozer. And it may not take a month. It may take a week or two.”

Preparation will involve digging through layers of sand and gravel, and only upon reaching a certain strata which the local workers would consider as an excellent source of raw diamonds would the company’s trucks and excavators get to work taking the ore to the processing plant.

A Brazilian company that used to mine the site was able to extract as high as 74,395 carats in 1983 and as low as 15,285 carats in 1987, dredging along a river channel that runs through the area. Environmental regulations in the country stopped such a mining mode. BMIX this time will only mine inland in areas which the Brazilian company had not touched.

The area also is a potential gold producer. Fogassa says gold ore will also be extracted and brought to a state-of-the-art plant which BMIX had put up near the site.

“The processing plant is phenomenal,” he says. “Sort of like a Ferrari for processing diamonds and gold. It was built by South African engineers a few years ago with a predecessor company that existed in that area. We bought it for pennies on a dollar, really for a very excellent price.”

At the plant, the gravel gets washed and rewashed, and then gets separated by size.

“Diamonds and gold are heavy,” continues Fogassa. “So they sediment to the bottom. Gold gets processed in a different channel than the diamonds.”

Fogassa says they don’t have any problems with locating buyers for the precious minerals.

“Currently I have more than a wait list. I have these investors that have been with us for about two years. They will buy everything and more than what we have,” he explains. “So essentially I don’t have any opening right now for anybody new, unless they were committed to invest in our overall company as these investors have.”

Many of the company’s investors buy diamonds from sales provided funding, for buying things like excavator trucks, machinery, and provide a steady working capital for BMIX.

With mining operations focused in Brazil, Fogassa tells how proud he feels having set up his headquarters in Pasadena.

“I had an office actually in Beverly Hills,” he says. “I changed it because it made no sense to commute to Beverly Hills. So I changed it to Lake Avenue. And that was about two or three years ago. And so my office has been on Lake since then. And it’s working out very nicely. I would say that people in the U.S. know how much phenomenal Pasadena is in that location for business and for living.”