TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The exploration spin-out of project developer Mountain Province Diamonds, Kennady Diamonds, on Thursday reported “outstanding” diamond recovery results at the Kennady North diamond project, located in Canada's Northwest Territories.

Kennady announced that the diamond recovery results from a Kelvin 930 kg sample, recovered by core drilling at the Kelvin North Lobe, returned a sample grade of 3.55 ct/t for diamonds of commercial size. The sample was processed by caustic fusion at the Geoanalytical Laboratories Diamond Services of the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC).

In a trading day marked by negative movement on several significant North American stock markets, Canadian explorer Kennady Diamonds’ TSX-V-listed stock on Thursday managed to add C$0.05 to close at C$2.40 apiece.

The project is situated immediately next to the Gahcho Kué diamond mine currently under development by De Beers and Mountain Province.

"Kelvin North Lobe drill samples continue to return outstanding diamond recovery results. Over the course of 2015 we have processed by caustic fusion a total of 14.7 t of core samples from the Kelvin North Lobe, which have returned an average sample grade of 2.83 ct/t. These correspond well with a December 2014 North Lobe mini-bulk sample processed by dense media separation at the SRC, which returned a grade of 2.59 ct/t," Kennady president and CEO Patrick Evans commented.

He noted that planning was now well underway to recover a 500 t bulk sample from the North Lobe in February/March 2016, with results expected by mid-2016. The bulk sample was expected to deliver more than 1 200 ct to support revenue modelling for the Kelvin kimberlite.

Kennady reported that preparation of the maiden Kelvin National Instrument 43-101-compliant resource statement was well underway and was expected to be released in early 2016. The results from three further bulk samples that had been delivered to the SRC were also expected early in the New Year.

"Following the recent closing of a C$48-million non-brokered private placement, Kennady Diamonds is fully funded to the end of 2017, when we expect to be in a position to make a decision to build the first mine at Kelvin,” Evans stated.

Kennady aimed to identify a resource along the Kelvin – Faraday kimberlite corridor of between a 13-million and 16-million tonnes at a grade of between 2 ct/t and 2.5 ct/t and also to identify new kimberlites outside of the corridor.