DIAMOND PAGE — Monopros cements presence

Monopros, the Canadian exploration arm of De Beers Consolidated Mines (DBRS-Q), is looking at Canadian diamond potential over the long haul.

The company recently added an office in an east-Toronto suburb to its sample processing plant in Grande Prairie, Alta., and its field offices in Val d’Or, Que., and Yellowknife, N.W.T. The company occupies the whole building, which has allowed it to consolidate its Toronto staff in one place, with the exploration office moving up from rented space downtown.

The showpiece of Monopros’s new location is a laboratory for sample processing, mineral separation and identification. The facility has a vibratory screen, a dense media separation unit, and a bank of binocular microscopes for mineral identification. Electron microprobe and scanning electron microscope analyses will still be routinely sent to De Beers’ laboratories in Kimberley, South Africa, but the lab’s ability to make mineral separates allows Monopros to send samples to local microprobe labs whenever quick results are important.

“All in all, we consider that this facility demonstrates our long-term commitment to prospecting for diamonds in Canada,” says Monopros Executive Director Robert Shirriff. The new office is a brick-and-mortar example of a policy that brought De Beers to Canada in 1949 under the none-too-diamondiferous name of “Canadian Rock Company.”