JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Plenty of interest had been received from potential joint-venture (JV) partners for Aim-listed diamond mining and exploration company Firestone Diamonds’ Tsabong kimberlite project, in Botswana.

The diamond-miner told shareholders in a statement on Friday that it was currently in negotiations with a number of potential JV partners to finance further work at the project.

“We consider Tsabong to be one of the most attractive large scale diamond exploration and evaluation projects in the market. The project has attracted substantial interest from potential JV partners despite the recent downturn in the rough diamond market, and we look forward to continuing work on Tsabong with a new partner later in 2009,” CEO Philip Kenny said.

He added that the results of the work the company has carried out on the project were encouraging and that the project had the potential to contain significant economic deposits.

The company had undertaken a large diameter drilling programme at the project in 2008, sampling eight out of 14 high-interest kimberlites identified at Tsabong.

The results had been encouraging, said the company, adding that microdiamonds had been recovered from five of the kimberlites.

A further eight high-interest kimberlites would be subject to bulk sampling, going forward, while a further 71 kimberlites would be evaluated.

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