Perth, Australia-based Namakwa Diamond has recovered another 1,014 diamonds from trenching on its 49-sq.-km Namakwa diamond project on South Africa’s West Coast, 350 km north of Cape Town.
The largest stone recovered weighs in at 1.33 carats.
The latest haul brings to 2,434 the numbers of diamonds recovered from the newly discovered gravel unit. On Sept. 16, the company reported the recovery of 1,420 diamonds from 325 tonnes derived from another trench in the area.
In all 631 tonnes of material from the new zone have been collected with 212.7 carats of stones recovered for an average grade of 33.7 carats per hundred tonne (cpht), significantly higher than Namakwa’s target grade of 10 cpht, and well above the average grade for the Namaqualand Coast.
Based on the positive results, the company plans to focus its efforts on the zone, which lies about 10 km north of a previous exploration trench, R17, where Namakwa began its bulk sampling program earlier this year. Trench R17 reportedly produced individual samples running up to 37.1 cpht.
Namakwa’s Executive Chairman, Karl Simich, said in a prepared statement, "This new terrace deposit looks exciting, because of its proximity to the bedrock and its more favourable depositional environment it has the potential to deliver much higher grades and significantly larger diamonds."
The company believes that the Olifants and Orange Rivers delivered the diamonds recovered from its onshore gravels to the coast. Namakwa’s concessions lie just north of the mouth of the Olifants.
The project includes a 30-40-tonne-per-hour processing plant, which can be expanded to 100 tonnes per hour for first stage mining with minimal capital investment. The A$750,000 plant includes a Flowsort recovery unit.
Work continues and further results will be released as they become available. The company is looking to establish a resource of at least 10 million tonnes running at least 10 cpht on its three adjacent concessions.
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