Stellar ups Droujba diamond resource to 2.9 mln carats

Stellar Diamonds has increased the diamond resource at its Droujba kimberlite project, in Guinea to 2.92 million carats.
The project comprised of the Droujba pipe and Katcha dyke.
"At Droujba the kimberlite pipe resource remains at 2.47 million carats with the nearby Katcha kimberlite dyke adding a further 446,000 carats," said Stellar chief executive Karl Smithson in a statement emailed to Rough&Polished.
"Encouragingly, the contributing Katcha resource is from a small 475m long section down to 150m depth, which represents less than 10 percent of its estimated 5km strike length."
Katcha remained open with an estimated strike length of 5km based on field mapping
He said Stellar had in less than a year established a combined resource of 4 million carats from its Droujba and Tongo kimberlite projects in Guinea and Sierra Leone respectively.
Smithson also said that the weakening of the rough diamond market in 2012 had impacted the average diamond values used in the Droujba resource model.
“However, we believe in the robust fundamentals for the outlook of the diamond market and that longer term diamond values will readjust to more favourable levels reflecting the projected supply and demand imbalances,” he said.
“Therefore, consistent with our focused strategy of developing our key kimberlite projects, we intend to embark on an economic scoping in order to establish key economic criteria for the Droujba project and then decide whether to move the project towards an indicated resource status as part of a pre-feasibility study.”

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