As Star Diamonds takes the reins in full ownership of the Fort à la Corne joint venture (JV), the company’s technical team is once again focused on the technical investigation and evaluation of the Star-Orion diamond project, in Saskatchewan.
The renewed focus on the technical investigation marks a crucial phase of Star Diamonds, which is preparing a revised mineral resource estimate (MRE) for the Star-Orion project.
This updated estimate will serve as a cornerstone for a prefeasibility study (PFS) on which a production decision can be based.
“The revised MRE will potentially provide an improved foundation on which a well-constrained updated PFS can be built,” commented senior VP corporate development George Read.
The 2018 preliminary economic assessment demonstrated that it is economically efficient to mine the Orion South kimberlite first. However, Orion South has a significantly smaller evaluation diamond parcel than Star, adding some risk to the diamond price estimate for Orion South. Star Diamond believes there is opportunity to mitigate the risk in the Orion South diamond price estimate, without the necessity of additional bulk sampling to obtain a larger diamond evaluation parcel.
The scoping of an updated PFS will start in early 2024.
Read said that an estimated C$3-million in flow-through funding was required for 2024 to cover the revised resource estimate, the technical team expenses, scoping of the PFS, overall site management and environmental compliance. An additional financing of at least C$3-million to C$5-million would be needed to cover the costs of the updated engineering work required by the PFS in the latter part of 2024 and early 2025.
Star Diamonds announced last week that it would buy Rio Tinto’s 75% interest in the JV.