25th Oct 2016 10:25
LONDON (Alliance News) - Botswana Diamonds PLC on Tuesday said its joint venture has discovered a diamond in its re-analysis of concentrate from its drilling on kimberlite pipe AK21, and said drilling on the AK22 pipe encountered fresh kimberlite.
The joint venture between Botswana and fellow diamond producer Alrosa completed two large diametre drill holes on the AK21 pipe, located within licence PL260 in Orapa, Botswana, last April. Around 80.0 tonnes of samples were then sent to a processing facility in South Africa.
Control microdiamonds were included in the material sent to the facility, in line with best practice to detect inefficacies in the processing plant, and the results from the facility showed test work was "insufficiently robust as no diamonds were recovered, not even the control diamonds".
As such, Botswana Diamonds recovered the concentrate from the processing facility and analysts from Alrosa re-analysed it. The first 20 kilograms re-analysed produced a 1 milometre octchedron diamond, which was a "newly discovered diamond and not one of the controlled stones".
A further 60 kilograms of concentrate sample is currently being analysed.
Meanwhile, drilling is ongoing elsewhere in licence PL260, with two core holes targetting pipe AK22. Botswana Diamonds said fresh, virgin kimberlite was discovered during the drilling, with results to be compared to results from historical drilling.
Core from these holes is to be initially analysed by Alrosa analysts and then will be send to Russia for retailed evaluation.
"The Alrosa/Botswana Diamonds joint venture identified licence PL260 in Orapa as having strong potential. It had already identified anomalies which deserved attention. Moreover, historical drilling had found several diamonds, albeit not yet enough to be commercial grade," said Botswana Chairman John Teeling.
Shares in Botswana were up 2.1% at 1.79 pence on Tuesday.
By Hannah Boland; [email protected]; @Hannaheboland
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