Botswana’s Ministry of Mineral Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security has granted a renewal of TSX-listed Tsodilo Resources’ prospecting licence in the country for an additional two years, ending September 30, 2021.
The licence area, which is within the Orapa Kimberlite Field (OKF), contains the company’s BK16 kimberlite project.
Tsodilo plans to soon start a Phase 2 surface bulk sampling programme, which will entail extraction, processing and diamond recovery of 20 000 t of kimberlite to obtain between 800 ct and 1 600 ct of diamonds.
Diamond mines in Botswana have produced about 27-million carats a year in the last ten years and Botswana is the world’s largest producer of diamonds by value. The OKF alone in 2016 produced 8.85-million carats.
Tsodilo’s Phase 1 bulk sampling programme successfully demonstrated the potential of the BK16 kimberlite to host high-value diamonds that sell for between $281/ct and $792/ct, as well as confirmed the presence of Type IIa diamonds.
The company says the Phase 2 bulk sampling programme will improve the understanding of the grade of the deposit in carats per hundred tonnes, solidify further the accuracy of the high diamond value in dollar per carat terms, further confirm the presence and quality of the Type IIa diamond population and confirm the presence of larger stones.
Tsodilo expects the Phase 2 programme to define an inferred resource and help the project move towards detailed feasibility studies and, ultimately, mining.