Botswana Diamonds’ Thorny River discovery advances towards resource assessment

The AIM and BSE listed diamond explorer, Botswana Diamonds says it has advanced towards resource assessment at its Thorny River diamond project, in South Africa.
It said following the recent discovery of a second kimberlite blow at Thorny River, independent specialists aggregated all the geophysical and drilling data to model the potential kimberlite volume of the two adjacent blows and the connecting kimberlite. 
The updated model, it said, estimates a range for the two blows of between 300,000 to 600,000 tonnes in aggregate, which is up to a three-fold increase in the volume following the modelling of the first blow.
Botswana Diamonds says it was planning to drill the potential mineralisation between the two kimberlite blows to test their belief that the two blows potentially join. 
“The revised model, potentially tripling the estimate of contained kimberlite, is very positive,” said company chairperson John Teeling. “The extension of the blow eastwards toward the blow discovered in earlier drilling offers the tantalising prospect of joining the two into one orebody.” 
“We expect to drill the area between the two blows in August. These are significant steps towards potentially discovering a commercial diamond orebody.”
Botswana Diamonds’ expectation based on the historical grade of Thorny River / Marsfontain dykes is 60 carats per hundred tonnes (cpht). 

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