Shore Gold Inc. finds record stone
Shore Gold Inc. has recovered the largest diamond ever found in Saskatchewan at the Star Diamond Project in the Fort a la Corne area.
By C. McGarrigle of The Journal
Melfort Journal — Shore Gold Inc. has recovered the largest diamond ever found in Saskatchewan at the Star Diamond Project in the Fort a la Corne area.
The diamond, measured at 19.71 carats, or approximately the diameter of a nickel, was discovered as part of the bulk sampling program aimed at recovering 3,000 carats to be tested for valuation purposes.
"It's very exciting. It's always splashy to get a big stone, although from the very first disclosure when the initial results started to come back, we've had big stones, but this is the first double-digit stone," said George Sanders vice-president of corporate development for Shore Gold Inc.
A total of 1,459 commercial sized diamonds (greater than 1.18 millimetres), weighing 227.6 carats, have been recovered from 1,573 dry tonnes of kimberlite in the latest batch.
Thirty-three diamonds greater than one carat have also been recovered in the batch, with the four largest stones measuring 19.71 carats, 7.48 carats, 5.61 carats and 4.67 carats.
Sanders said that to date, the company has recovered 687 carats out of 16 batches. Close to 100 batches will be needed before the sampling is completed.
"I think that our exercise here, even though it's still early days, has already confirmed that the larger stone that the joint venture found in the drill hole is no fluke for Saskatchewan, and in fact that the Fort a la Corne kimberlites do contain substantial large diamonds," stated Sanders.
The newest release from Shore Gold Inc. on the latest exploration results has seen the company's stocks rise almost 25 per cent in the first few hours from the announcement on July 29 to $1.780 per share.
However, the stocks leveled off at $1.65 by the end of the trading day.
The 52-week high for the stock is $2.290 per share and the 52-week low for the stock is $1.030.
"We were really encouraged and very excited about the initial results that we disclosed back in June. The market had an unfavourable opinion of those, but we saw some things in that information that we knew for sure that we were absolutely on the right track," explained Sanders on the market results.
What has executives excited about the new diamond discoveries is the colour of the stones. Over 80 per cent of those diamonds have been classified as white (Early Joli Fou - higher grade), with a further 13 per cent classified as off-white (Late Joli Fou - lower grade).
"We are most encouraged that the kimberlite grade and stone size continue to improve and that our recent kimberlite volume calculations have shown that the higher grade Early Joli Fou kimberlite accounts for approximately 80 per cent of Star," said George Read, senior vice president of exploration.
To date, some 14,500 dry tonnes of kimberlite has been extracted from Star Diamond Project as part of the bulk sampling program.
Up to 25,000 tonnes of kimberlite will be recovered from the shaft and drifts to be processed on site to produce the diamond parcel for testing.
Once the Kimberlite is processed on-site, the samples are sent to Rio Tinto's Thunder Bay Mineral Processing Laboratory for an independent audit.
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