Diamond News

In its annual report, Stornoway Diamond Corporation reported its participation in flow-through financing in November 2008 issuing a total of 26,188,334 “flow-through” common shares priced at $0.15 per share. Gross proceeds came to $3,928,250 from both the brokered and non-brokered private placements. The flow-through dollars are reportedly being used to further exploration on the Renard diamond project in Quebec.

The company also stated that it added the title of Chief Executive Officer to Matt Manson’s role as President, stepping in for Eira Thomas who assumed a new role as Executive Chairman.

Regarding the Renard diamond project, the company reported a Positive Economic Study in October 2008.
 
The study revealed a compliant mineral resource comprising 7 million carats of Indicated Resource (11.6 million tons at an average grade of 60 carats per hundred tons) and 4.5 million carats of Inferred Resource (7.2 million tons at an average grade of 63 carats per one hundred tons).
 
Project capital costs came to C$308 million and to an average life of diamond mine operating cost of C$50.35/ton in a conceptual mine plan utilizing both open pit and underground diamond mining.
 
At the Aviat diamond project, the company completed 23 exploratory diamond drill holes for a total of 3,225 m of drilling in 2008. The first sample yielded 89.5 carats of diamonds from 42.67 dry tons of kimberlite for a diamond content of 210 carats per hundred tons. The total diamond content for the ES1 sample was 159 carats per hundred tons.

Stornoway President & CEO Matt Manson stated: “The 2008 study highlighted the large amount of additional ‘potential mineral deposit’ that was implied to exist but which remained outside of the formal resource statement and, starting in January, we set about drilling for this material.”

He added: “The results of this drilling have greatly exceeded our expectations. We discovered that Renard 2, which already comprised approximately 5 years of our 7 year conceptual mine life, was larger in dimension at depth than at surface.”

In summary, Manson noted that despite expenditure restrictions applied to the company’s other exploration projects in 2009, it was able to achieve good results on a cost efficient basis using patience, opportunism and in-house resources.