Botswana Diamonds completes nine-hole drilling on Thorny River

Botswana Diamonds has completed its nine-hole drilling programme on the Thorny River property in South Africa.
It said the objective of the hole drilling was to see if two kimberlite blows were one contiguous orebody, thus increasing the overall resource and improving the commercial prospects of the project.
The diamond explorer said one hole intersected 19.1 metres of kimberlite zone, which is the biggest thickness found in all three drilling programmes to date. 
Another hole intersected a thickness of 13.5m of kimberlite zone.
Botswana Diamonds said these two intersections came from extending the River Blow toward the Extension Blow. 
The average kimberlite zone intersection was between 1.5 and 5 metres.
“This is an excellent set of results,” said company chairperson John Teeling.
“The two blows are, as we hoped, connected - thus increasing the resource. The two thickest intersections close to the River Blow are particularly exciting. Given these results, we are now examining commercial mine alternatives.”
Botswana Diamonds said work has now begun to create a model of the combined blows to estimate the potential resource with plans for a possible open cast mining.
Two new additional targets have been identified close to the current area.
These could also be blows and will be drilled, it said.

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