Ashton adds to Renard value

Discovered this past April, the Renard 9 kimberlitic body in north-central Quebec has yielded a strong microdiamond count.

Renard 9 is one of eight kimberlitic bodies discovered by the Ashton Mining of Canada (ACA-T) and Soquem joint venture in the Otish Mountains region. A 212.4-kg core sample returned 178 microdiamonds, including a single stone weighing 0.11 carat, caught in the 1.7-to-2.36-mm sieve size fraction, and a diamond retrieved from a 0.85-to-1.18-mm square-mesh size fraction. The larger stone is a pale-brown composite crystal.

About 60% of the sample material consisted of kimberlitic breccia, with the remainder composed of hypabyssal kimberlite. Ashton crews discovered Renard 9 while drilling a 160-metre-long geophysical anomaly that ranges from 20 to 60 metres wide. The initial microdiamond results compare favourably with diamond results derived from other kimberlitic bodies in the Renard cluster.

The accompanying table shows the results of the caustic dissolution analysis in the more detailed square-mesh sieve format.

Renard 9 Microdiamond Results