Botswana Diamonds discovers new kimberlite blow at Thorny River

Botswana Diamonds says it has discovered a new blow or swell in the kimberlite dyke on its Thorny River property, in South Africa.
The new blow was about the same size as the River Blow discovered at Thorny River in November 2020.
It said 71 metres of kimberlite was intersected in the 12 holes, with an additional 19 metres of kimberlitic breccia.
The widest kimberlite down-the-hole intersection was 18 metres.  
Botswana Diamonds said the integration of the two bodies was yet to be confirmed due to restricted drilling access between the two areas, which are less than 100 metres apart.  
A continuous body would represent a significant discovery, Botswana Diamonds said. 
"This would double the volume of ore," said company chairperson John Teeling.  
"It is worth noting that the kimberlite dyke system at Thorny River contains an average of 60 diamond carats per one hundred tonnes of ore. We expect the current discovery to maintain that pattern."
Botswana Diamonds said the next step was to integrate the results of the latest drilling programme into previous drilling and ground geophysics campaigns and to develop a three-dimensional model of the two discoveries.  
This, it said, was expected to be complete by the end of May.  
Following this, samples from the drill chips which have been taken for diamond recovery and kimberlitic mineral content would be analysed and this is expected to be complete by mid-July.  
Based on the results from these two workstreams, further resource definition work will be planned. 

Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished