VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Explorer Kennady Diamonds has published a maiden resource estimate for the Kelvin kimberlite, located at the company’s 100%-owned Kennady North project, in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
The TSX-V-listed company said Monday that exploration work to date was sufficient to calculate a compliant indicated resource of 13.62-million carats of diamonds contained in 8.5-million tonnes of kimberlite, with an overall grade of 1.6 ct/t and an average value of $63/ct.
"Our resource announcement represents the culmination of a focused evaluation programme that was intensified over the past two years. The internal geology and diamond distribution within Kelvin are now so well-constrained that our model meets the stringent requirements to qualify as an indicated resource,” stated president and CEO of Kennady Diamonds Dr Rory Moore.
Kennady, the exploration spin-out of Mountain Province Diamonds, which is a major (49%) partner with De Beers in the Gahcho Kué diamond mine, also located nearby in the Northwest Territories, said the resource had been estimated with a 1 mm diamond bottom cutoff size, which is considered a reasonable cutoff for a commercial mining scenario.
The resource was determined through the collective efforts of Aurora Geosciences, Mineral Services Canada, SRK Consulting and JDS Energy & Mining, which the company engaged to participate in the exercise.
“I congratulate our team on taking Kelvin from discovery to a 13-million-carat indicated resource in the first four years of our company – quite possibly a record timeframe in the history of Canadian diamond exploration,” Moore pointed out.