Update from Vatukoula, Fiji

RNS Number:9858T
River Diamonds PLC
08 May 2008

8 May 2008



                               River Diamonds PLC

                      (the 'Company' or 'River Diamonds')



           Commencement of Roaster at the Vatukoula Gold Mine in Fiji

                      Further Open Pit Resource Identified



River Diamonds announces today that the sulphide roaster commenced processing at
the Company's 100% owned Vatukoula Gold Mine in Fiji. With the roaster start up
the Company expects the first gold pour from ongoing operations to occur over
the next week.



Progress at the President Hill open cut, located near the Borthwick shaft, has
continued, and a total of 99,600 tonnes of ore have been identified at a grade
of 6.11 grams of gold per tonne. It is expected that approximately 65,000 tonnes
of overburden will be removed to access some of the ore. The ore from President
Hill will be used to supplement the daily underground production. Currently
these resources are not JORC compliant but the Company intends to bring the
resource to JORC standards over the coming months.



The Company has also secured 2 Megawatts of additional power from the Fijian
Electricity Authority ("FEA"). The FEA are providing this power at approximately
a 30% discount to the Company's power production costs.



The JORC-compliant gold resources at the Vatukoula Gold Mine total 16.84 million
tonnes at an average grade of 9.49 grams of gold per tonne or 5.15 million
ounces of gold. The mine is budgeted to produce some 28,000 ounces of gold to 30
June 2008 and 111,000 ounces of gold to the year ending June 2009.



Currently the Vatukoula mine employs approximately 700 personnel.



Enquiries



River Diamonds plc

David Lenigas                                  020 7016 5100
Colin Orr Ewing                                020 7352 4117

W.H. Ireland Limited

David Porter                                   020 7220 1666
James Joyce

Hichens, Harrison & Co plc                     020 7382 7785
Dave Paxton

Parkgreen Communications                       020 7851 7480
Laura Llewelyn



Qualified Person



Kiran Morzaria B.Eng (ACSM), MBA, has reviewed and approved the information
contained in this announcement. Kiran holds a Bachelor of Engineering
(Industrial Geology) from the Camborne School of Mines and an MBA (Finance) from
CASS Business School. Kiran is the Finance Director of River Diamonds. He is a
fellow of the Geological Society.




                      This information is provided by RNS
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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