Pele, De Beers recover Genesis diamonds (March 18, 2004)

Toronto-based diamond explorer Pele Mountain Resources (GEM-V) is reporting that De Beers, its partner at the Festival property north of Wawa, Ont., has recovered a 0.9-carat diamond from a bulk sample taken at the property’s Genesis occurence.

Pele described the ultramafic facies of rock from which the diamond was recoverd as being comparable to the facies from which a 0.72-carat, white, gem-quality diamond, dubbed the “Big Goose,” was recovered in March 2003 from the Cristal diamond occurrence, also on the Festical property.

In its latest sampling program at Festival in late 2003, De Beers collected four bulk samples weighing a total of 258 tonnes and processed them at its sorting facilities in Grande Prairie, Sask.

Two of the bulk samples represent ultramafic facies from different locations at Genesis and the other two samples represent a mafic facies from the Genesis and Moet diamond occurrences.

From these samples, 875 kg of diamond concentrate was produced and then shipped to South Africa for final diamond extraction and reporting of results.

Pele notes that each of the four bulk samples successfully returned commercial-size diamonds greater than 1 mm square-mesh sieve size.

Also, a total of 44% of all diamonds reported from the bulk samples were not recovered by x-ray sorting.