canada’s rush mini-staking - tundra airdiamonds. lucara bought an initial 70% stake in the project...

I N C A N A D AI N C A N A D A November 2014

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Canada’s

rushmini-staking

Lukas Lundin talks diamonds

Matt Manson’s path to Renard

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November 2014Contents

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Lukas Lundin talks diamondsAn exclusive interview with the mining mogulBy Alisha Hiyate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Stornoway CEO Matt Manson’s path to RenardQuebec’s first diamond mine targets commercial production in 2017By Salma Tarikh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Canadian production on the riseNew mines to boost market share by value to 25%By Paul Zimnisky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Canada’s mini-staking rushA roundup of new and established diamond explorersBy Alisha Hiyate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Construction nears halfway mark at Gahcho KuéMountain Province raises fundsBy Alisha Hiyate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Dominion Diamonds unearths plenty of upside at EkatiCanada’s first diamond mine still growingBy Matthew Keevil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

On the cover: Helicopter pick-up at North Arrow Minerals’ Pikoo project in Saskatchewan.Credit: Colin Bateman

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Publisher: Anthony Vaccaro

Editor: Alisha Hiyate

Art Direction: Andrea M. Smith

Production Manager: Tracey Hanson

Contributing Writers: Matthew Keevil Salma Tarikh Paul Zimnisky

Advertising Sales: Joe Crofts Dave Chauvin

Printed in Canada. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may only be reproduced with the written consent of The Northern Miner.Issue price: $6.00

November 2014 Diamonds in Canada v 3

I N C A N A D A

Digital copy available to subscribers at www.northernminer.com



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I N C A N A D A

4 v Diamonds in Canada November 2014

Reading the tea leavesL ukas Lundin, the chairman of Lucara

Diamond may be bullish on diamonds (see Page 5), but he doesn’t see things

improving for diamond juniors in the near term.

“The general mood in junior exploration across the board is tough. I think you need the whole sector to pick up and you’re going to get some of this going,” he said in a recent in-terview. “There’s no gold exploration, no base metals exploration, there’s very little going on right now — and those poor junior guys, it’s very tough to raise a couple of million dollars.”

But Lundin does see things turning around eventually: “It always does,” he says. “Explora-tion never goes away — it just goes in troughs.”

According to De Beers’ first-ever Insight Re-port detailing the state of the diamond indus-try, released this fall, diamond supply peaked in 2005 at 176 million carats. While new mines coming onstream over the next few years will lift production temporarily to around 160 mil-lion carats, supply is expected to decline again after 2020.

At the same time, diamond exploration spending in 2013 was roughly US$500 mil-lion — about half of what it was at its peak of US$1 billion in 2007. Moreover just two entities, De Beers and Alrosa (the world’s two largest diamond miners), accounted for nearly 75% of total exploration spending last year.

All this as diamond demand is expected to grow over the coming decade, even in scenarios of low economic growth.

The disparity is obvious.But even as exploration dollars remain lim-

ited, some advanced explorers have found the cash they need to move forward — with the help of deep-pocketed backers.

Grenville Thomas’ North Arrow Minerals, which started its exploration programs in 2013 after a restructuring last March, has raised $13 million in the past 18 months thanks to

the backing of the Lundin family (see ).Peregrine Diamonds completed a $15.1-mil-

lion rights offering in October back-stopped by its three largest shareholders: Robert Fried-land, CEO Eric Friedland, and Ned Goodman.

Even Kennady Diamonds, which has raised $21.3 million over the past year, has had the help of a major shareholder: Irish billionaire Dermot Desmond owns about 20% of the stock through Bottin Investments.

Still, interest is returning to the diamond space as the reality of shrinking supply and a lack of discoveries sets in. Without that inter-est, we wouldn’t be seeing large financings for project development — including nearly $1 billion for junior Stornoway Diamond’s Renard project in April (see Page 8), and the nearly $500 million Mountain Province Diamonds is expected to raise for its portion of Gahcho Kué construction before the year is through (see Page 18).

In May, noting that diamond equities out-perfomed gold equities in 2013 (albeit in a bad year for gold), Dundee Capital Markets initiated coverage on five diamond companies — two diamond developers and three explor-ers. Dundee is so enthusiastic about the sector that it organized its first diamond conference in October.

Sensing a change, and hoping to emulate the success of junior Kennady Diamonds, diamond juniors are starting to return to the market (Page 14). Several new listings are in the works, familiar faces are reactivating their diamond exploration vehicles, and staking activity and land deals have picked up.

If they’re reading the tea leaves correctly, it’s only a matter of time before the interest in more advanced diamond stories reaches the juniors tasked with finding the next generation of diamond mines.As ever, we welcome your feedback at [email protected].

Diamond

demand is

expected to

grow over

the coming

decade, even

in scenarios

of low

economic

growth.

AlishA hiyAte editor




I N C A N A D A

Lukas Lundin is bullish on diamonds. The famed mining mogul and chairman of Lucara Diamond (TSX: LUC) sees rising demand and a lack of new discov-

eries as underpinning the healthy — although volatile — sector.

But the man behind the Lundin Group of Com-panies freely admits he’s no diamond expert.

“It’s a very complicated business,” Lundin said in a telephone interview from Geneva in late September.

“It’s very hard to find, it’s hard to produce, it’s hard to sell — there’s 3,000 different types — so you definitely need to be surrounded by people who know the business,” he continued. “Once you surround yourself with it, it’s a fascinating business, but it’s hard to get all the knowledge yourself.”

Known more for his investments in oil, base metals and gold, Lucara was Lundin’s first foray into diamonds. But he certainly ventured into the diamond business with the right guides.

Lundin started Lucara Diamond — which is enjoying enormous success at its rich Karowe mine in Botswana — with diamond sector bona fides Eira Thomas (Aber Resources, Stornoway Diamond [TSX: SWY], and current CEO of Kaminak Gold [TSXV: KAM]) and William Lamb (De Beers), as well as Catherine McLeod-Seltzer (Arequipa

Resources, Stornoway Diamond and Bear Creek Mining [TSXV: BCM]).

“I wouldn’t have got the property without the people, because they had the right contacts.” Lun-din says, adding he never would have known about the feasibility-stage project either.

Then known as the AK-6 project, Karowe was owned by De Beers and AIM-listed junior African Diamonds.

Lucara bought an initial 70% stake in the project in 2009 for US$49 million, acquired African Dia-monds in an all-stock transaction in late 2010, and started construction around the same time.

Karowe achieved full production in mid-2012, with the first-phase cost coming in under Lucara’s budget of US$120 million.

Karowe, which is expected to produce 400,000 carats per year over a 13-year mine life, would be a profitable mine if it had performed as expected.

But the open-pit mine has consistently produced large, high-value diamonds that have Karowe gen-erating so much cash that this year, Lucara became the first Lundin Group company to start paying out dividends — a move intended to appeal to yield-play investors and boost the share price.

“Whoever thought that (Lucara would be the first) — the most speculative thing I’ve ever done!” Lundin says, then adding: “Or maybe not.”

Lukas Lundin

diamondstalks

exclusive interview

Lukas Lundin, chairman of Lucara Diamond.Photo credit: The Lundin Group

By AlishA hiyAte


I N C A N A D A


Lundin is the son of another famous resource sector entre-preneur, the late Adolf Lundin, who made his name and fortune making high-stakes acquisitions in oil and mining — including the Tenke Fungurume copper project in the Democratic Repub-lic of the Congo. As such, his tolerance for risk is definitely on the high side. At presstime, Lundin company Fortress Minerals (soon to be renamed Lundin Gold) announced it’s buying the huge Fruta del Norte deposit in Ecuador — the country that instituted a 70% windfall profits tax in 2013 — from Kinross Gold (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC) for US$240 million.

Aside from political risk, Lundin is also willing to take on exploration risk. In Canada’s still young diamond sector, that means the risk of pouring money into expensive Arctic explora-tion programs and coming up empty-handed.

“Today the general public is not that keen on diamond explora-tion because it’s so hard. You find a pipe, you see if it’s diamondif-erous, then you have to see if it’s economic, then you need a bulk sample — it just takes so long,” he says. “They had early success in the Northwest Territories, but it’s just so hard to get to the end game and you need so much patience and so much money.”

While Canadian diamond explorers have struggled to raise money since the Great Recession, when “the well ran dry,” Lundin has taken a chance with diamond junior North Arrow Minerals (TSXV: NAR).

Last year, Lundin took a nearly 20% stake in the company,

chaired by former Aber Resources ex-ecutive Grenville Thomas.

Aber, which has now become Do-minion Diamond (TSX: DDC), discovered the Diavik mine with Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO). With North Arrow, Lundin is again relying on the diamond expertise of people he knows and trusts.

“Gren Thomas and Eira said, ‘You know we have these properties that look quite inter-esting. They’ve been explored and they got to the 90-metre line and they couldn’t finish the program,’” Lun-din recalls. “So I said, let’s pick up the best properties around and let’s finish off the drilling or the sampling we have to do, because there’s been so much money and time spent on it already, you’re at the end game.”

The result is that North Arrow was able to raise $3 million to get started in March 2013. Since then, it’s raised another $10 million and amassed a portfolio of seven prospective diamond projects that have seen much of the early, expensive work al-ready done — removing a lot of technical risk.

“I’m not sure if they’re going to be good or bad,” Lundin says. “But there’s been so much work, it’s worth trying it.”

Several of the projects — including Qilalugaq, the most ad-

vanced — were generated by Stornoway, which is now focused on building its Renard mine in Quebec.

The potential of North Arrow’s most advanced project, Qilalugaq, will soon be clearer. After taking a bulk sample from the Q1-4 kimberlite this summer, the company’s expecting a diamond valuation in the first quarter of 2015 that will help it assess the project.

KaroweLundin is of the school of thought that sees diamonds as an indulgence (a big theme of De Beers recent Insight Report, see Page 4), rather than a commodity.

“Diamonds are very unique; I look at them more as a luxury good — it’s like a Picasso painting or something.”

It’s not hard to see why, when you factor in the extraordinary diamonds that Karowe has been

producing.To the end of September, Lucara has mined

1,400 diamonds larger than 10.8 carats and nine larger than 200 carats — including “ex-ceptional” stones that Lucara sells in special tenders.

Fifty exceptional stones sold this year have generated revenues of $135.6 million at an average value of $32,468 per carat. That’s over half of Lucara’s 2014 forecasted revenue of US$240-250 million. (The spe-

cial diamonds led the company to revise its forecast upwards from US$150-160 million

at the beginning of the year.)“We have so many unique diamonds,” Lundin

says. “Twenty-five per cent of our diamonds are Type IIA, which means less nitrogen in them and only 0.2% of

the world’s diamonds have that so they’re actually quite unique in large diamonds.”

Large diamonds boosted the mine’s average diamond price to US$764 per carat in the first half of the year, vs. a late 2011 valuation of Karowe diamonds that came up with a value at

‘(Diamonds are) very unique. . . like a Picasso painting.’

— Lukas Lundin, chairman of Lucara Diamond

A truck at Lucara Diamond’s Karowe mine in Botswana; Inset: A 239-carat diamond from Karowe. Photo credits: Lucara Diamond


I N C A N A D A


US$301 per carat.“We didn’t expect to recover as many big diamonds as we

have,” says Lundin, who adds it has helped that the company uses autogenous grinding at its processing plant, rather than semi-autogenous grinding, which is more conventional in Botswana and South Africa.

“It’s more careful with the rock,” Lundin says, and less likely to break diamonds.

As Lucara prepares to mine the fresher, harder kimberlite encountered in the AK-6 kimberlite’s south lobe, which is also the biggest of the north, central and south lobes, the company is spending US$55 million on a plant upgrade this year. A large diamond recovery circuit, which will allow the company to re-cover diamonds up to 60-70 mm, will also be installed.

The upgraded plant will be ready for commissioning at the end of the first quarter of 2015.

So what’s next for Lucara?With all the cash flow Karowe is generating, another acquisi-tion is likely — but only when the time is right.

“If I can get another six months to get the plant upgraded and then get the true value, then we’ll see what to do,” Lundin says.

Lucara has no debt and at the end of June, had US$82.1 mil-lion in cash.

In the meantime, the company is preparing to do some near-mine site exploration: in September, it picked up two

concessions with kimberlite pipes that lie within a 30-km radius of Karowe.

“De Beers did a lot of work on them and they found some microdiamonds in them, but then they left them, so we picked up two of them,” Lundin says.

Lucara has already acquired a bulk-sample plant for $2.5 million to test the kimberlites, which were discovered in the late 1960s.

“I think there’s more to be done in that area because De Beers found Jwaneng and all those big mines there and then they didn’t do anything else. They didn’t have to,” Lundin said, alluding to the richness of Botswana’s diamond mines.

The nearby Orapa mine, owned by Debswana (a 50/50 joint venture of De Beers), is the richest diamond mine in the world, producing 12.9 million carats a year.

Investors can also expect an announcement with regards to Lucara’s Mothae project, in Lesotho, before the end of the year. Lundin says the project needs a little more testing, but the company is looking at a small-scale, 1-million-tonne-per-year plant to start out with.

Lucara Diamond shares traded at $2.22 in late October, in a 52-week range of $1.22-2.88. The company has 379 million shares outstanding, and the Lundin family, through two family trusts and Lukas Lundin’s owns holdings, own 18.9% of Lucara’s outstanding shares.


http://www.kennadydiamonds.com


I N C A N A D A

Hard work and perseverance have been paying off for Stornoway Diamond (TSX: SWY) president and CEO Matt Manson.

The 48-year-old executive recently saw the start of construction at the Renard diamond project in north-central Quebec — nearly a decade af-ter the project first caught his eye as a potential acquisition.

“I’ve been in this since then to see the mine built,” the Glasgow native says during an inter-view at his downtown Toronto office in the his-toric Gooderham Building. The third-floor suite is mainly used for investor relations, as Stornoway’s headquarters are in Montreal.

Construction at Renard kicked off in July, after Stornoway closed a nearly $1-billion financing.

Commercial production at the mine is targeted for mid-2017, and once in full swing, Quebec’s first diamond mine should produce 1.6 million carats a year over an initial 11-year life. Notably, Renard will be the first diamond mine in Canada to be ac-cessible by an all-weather road.

Getting to this point has not been easy. But of all the challenges he’s faced along the way, Manson says his biggest achievement as CEO has been clos-ing the $946-million financing package — a com-plex deal that included debt, equity, and streaming components. The deal, which Stornoway pulled off with a $120-million market capitalization, is the biggest-ever project financing for a publicly listed diamond company, and involved funding from the Quebec government, private equity, an institu-tional fund, and an equipment manufacturer.

CommerCial produCtion at QuebeC mine slated for 2017

By Salma Tarikh

Special to DiamonDS in

canaDa

Stornoway CEO

path toMatt Manson’s

REnaRd

stornoway diamond’s renard project, in Quebec; inset: stornoway president and Ceo matt manson.

photo credits: stornoway diamond


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The Star-Orion South Diamond Project FeasibilityStudy connrms that a world class diamond mineis feasible in Saskatchewan.• Probable Mineral Reserves of 279 million tonnes containing 34.4 million carats at a weighted average price of US$242 per carat.• Inferred Mineral Resources 9.1 million carats.

Considerable upside future potential:• Within the Fort a la Corne diamond district, Canada’s largest kimberlite eld, lies a Target for Further Exploration estimated to include between 983 million and 1.17 billion tonnes of kimberlite containing between 52 and 90 million carats of diamonds.

Currently Shore Gold is in the advanced stages of the Environmental Impact Assessment and anticipate its completion in 2014.

“I deserve the Nobel prize in mine proj-ect financing for doing that,” Manson says, smiling. “I’m happy for you to use that quote.”

Renard historyWhile Manson previously worked for Aber Resources, a predecessor of Do-minion Diamond (TSX: DDC; NYSE: DDC), his involvement with Renard actu-ally started with a gold company — Que-bec’s Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX: AEM; NYSE: AEM).

In 2005, Agnico hired Manson to run its 40% subsidiary Contact Diamond and to find an acquisition for it. Manson began looking at buying the promising Renard project.

At that time, Ashton and SOQUEM — the mining exploration arm of the Quebec government — jointly owned Renard. The partners had conducted four years of explo-ration work on the asset since discovering it in 2001.

After a few false starts, Manson took the acquisition idea to Stornoway’s then CEO Eira Thomas in 2006. (Thomas was involved in Aber Resources’ discovery of the Diavik diamond project in the Northwest Territories.) Stornoway and Contact already had a joint diamond exploration program in place, so the possibility of buying Renard piqued Thomas’s interest.

This resulted in Stornoway acquiring Ashton and Contact in a merger that closed in early 2007, providing the company with a 50% interest in Renard.

Agnico helped finance the combination by providing Stornoway $23 million of the $60-million cash component of the bid for Contact and Ashton, Manson notes, adding Stornoway took care of the rest.

Manson says Agnico has taken part in ev-ery Stornoway financing since then and cur-rently has a 3.3% interest in the company.

“At this stage, it is a value investment for them. You know, we are not going to be taken over by Agnico. But they like the asset, they have always liked it, and there is a lot of history there.”

Manson, who became Stornoway’s presi-dent in March 2007 and CEO in January

2009, concedes the company, like many other juniors, took a turn for the worse in 2008.

Renard’s first preliminary econom-ic assessment (PEA) in October 2008 failed to impress investors, with a seven-year mine life and modest economics.

“It was a small and skinny diamond project in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of a credit crisis and the stock sank like a stone,” Manson recounts. Shares bottomed that year at 5¢.

But things quickly turned around, as Stornoway managed to raise funds for a 2009 drill program.

“We had a stroke of extreme great fortune because at that stage, the only money out there was flow through and because we were a Quebec company we could access Quebec super flow.”

Stornoway raised $3 million through flow-through shares and partner SO-QUEM matched that to give it $6 million.

“We went drilling and we had a com-plete home run,” Manson says. “We dis-covered that the Renard 2 orebody — contrary to established dogma — was

getting bigger as it went down, rather than skinnier. Kimberlites are supposed to be carrot-shaped, fat at the top and skinner at the bottom, and this thing was actually going the other way.”

As drilling at depth at Renard 2 be-gan hitting long intersections of kimber-lite, the picture started to change for Stornoway.

“The stock began to take off, and we raised more flow though and did more drilling and by the end of the year we were back up, and I believe 85¢ was the high,” Manson says.

By the end of 2009, Stornoway had tripled Renard’s resource estimate.

The next year, Stornoway published Renard’s second PEA using the updated resource to outline a 20-year mine life (including inferred resources) and great-ly improved returns. “After that PEA had come out, we knew we had a major project on our hands,” Manson says.

Stornoway bought Renard’s remain-ing 50% interest from SOQUEM in April 2011. Since the purchase was made largely in shares, SOQUEM’s par-ent company Investissement Québec


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I N C A N A D A


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We’ve earned that kind of credibility with over 35 years of adaptive solutions for geological, geophysical and exploration support services in hard places across the north.

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became Stornoway’s largest shareholder. Subsequently, the firm published a positive feasibility study for Renard, which demonstrated a mine life of 11 years.

T he company moved ahead with permit t ing , building a 240-km road to the project from Chibou-gamau with the help of the provincial government, and community agreements. It also optimized the feasibil-ity study in 2013 (the study demonstrated the project has a post-tax net present value of $391 million and an internal rate of return of 16.3%), and most importantly, secured the funds needed to build the estimated $811-million mine this July.

Not measured in the feasibility numbers is the upside poten-tial from inferred resources at Renard, or the project’s potential to produce large diamonds. A March valuation of Renard dia-monds pegged their value at US$190 per carat, but that doesn’t

include the project’s potential for large diamonds — something the company is preparing for by adding the capacity to recover large diamonds of up to 30 mm in size (or 200 carats) to its plant.

The project holds 18 million carats of probable reserves in 23.8 million tonnes grading 75 carats per hundred tonnes.

First exposuresManson, who studied geophysics at the University of Edin-burgh, says he has always been interested in the Earth, the solar system and the bigger questions of geology.

His initial exposure to the mining industry came in 1988, just a year after he moved from Scotland to pursue a master’s and PhD in geology at the University of Toronto.

“I came to Canada in 1987 and I was in geology and my col-leagues in graduate school were going to the big booze-up on Tuesday night at the Prospectors’ and I went along and discov-ered the mining industry,” he recalls.

The social gathering — the Kirkland Lake Night at the annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference — left Manson with a positive impression of the sector.

“When you study geology in Britain you don’t really think of a career in mining, even though some of the biggest mining companies are British, you know Rio Tinto, Anglo American, BHP Billiton,” he says, noting a job in the oil and gas industry was preferred.

But Manson realized that Toronto was a centre for the mining industry and for mining project finance, and he decided to stay and work in Canada.

In the mid-nineties, while finishing his PhD thesis on the ge-ology of Lake Superior, he got a job with Caledonia, managed by GoldQuest Mining’s (TSXV: GQC) current CEO Bill Fisher. At Caledonia, Manson got his first taste of diamond exploration while working in the Northwest Territories. The firm later sent him to northern Scotland to run a gold exploration project.

“In the mid-nineties there was so much exploration going in diamonds that it was very easy to fall into, there were lots of job, lots of money being raised, and lots of activity.”

In 1996, Manson joined Fisher at Ambrex Mining, now named Karmin Exploration (TSXV: KAR) to look for diamonds in

Installation of accommodation modules at Stornoway Diamond’s Renard project in October. Photo credit: Stornoway Diamond

Nov 2014 DIC all pages.indd 10 14-11-20 11:18 AM

http://www.aurorageosciences.com

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Brazil. But Ambrex switched its search to gold and made the Ar-ipuana polymetallic discovery in Mato Grosso (currently under development with joint-venture partner Votorantim Metais.)

A year later, Manson started consulting for various compa-nies, including Aber Diamond, which owned a 40% interest in the Diavik diamond project. In 1999, he began working full time with Aber as vice-president of marketing and subsequently vice-president of technical services and control, under the direction of CEO Bob Gannicott.

Manson participated in the financing and development of the Diavik mine as well as the establishment of Aber’s dia-mond marketing operations. Diavik went into production in early 2003, as Canada’s second diamond mine. Man-son stayed with the firm un-til late 2004, before joining Contact Diamond.

“I had a front row seat. It was a terrific experience — it was a terrific primer for everything we are doing now,” he says.

While Manson is fully aware of what he’s already accom-plished at Renard, he’s also earned kudos from his mentors in the business, including Agnico Eagle CEO Sean Boyd.

“When I first met Matt you could tell he was not only very knowledgeable but he had energy and enthusiasm for the dia-mond business,” Boyd said in an emailed response to questions. “(He) has done an exceptional job moving Stornoway towards production in an extremely challenging market.”— The author is a staff writer with The Northern Miner.

Civil works on the mine office, garage and process plant pads at renard.Photo credit: Stornoway Diamond


http://www.mountainprovince.com

I N C A N A D A


With Gahcho Kué and Renard now officially under con-struction, I think it’s fair to say that in four years’ time,

Canadian diamond production will look sig-nificantly different than it does today.

In July, Stornoway Diamonds (TSX: SWY) completed a $964-million financing package to fund construction of Renard, in

Quebec. Mountain Province Diamonds (TSX: MPV) closed a $100-million equity financing in September, and is in the final stages of arranging US$370-million in debt to fund its portion of Gahcho Kué’s capital costs.

Canada currently represents an estimated 14.2% of the world’s diamond production in value, and 8.7% in carat volume. The two new mines, set to begin production in 2016/17, are expected to boost Canada’s global market share to 25.2% in value, and 15.1% in volume by 2018. That would give Canada the highest compound annual growth rate of production (20.2% in value and 17.4% in volume) among the world’s eight largest diamond-producing nations over the next four years.

Outside of Canada, there are only three other large-scale commercial mines sched-uled to open within the next four years: Lace, Botuobinskaya, and Bunder, all of which have annual production profiles below that of both Gahcho Kué and Renard.

DiamondCorp’s (LSE: DCP) fully fi-nanced Lace project in South Africa is es-timated to produce up to 500,000 carats annually, with first run-of-mine production slated for late next year. Laurelton Diamonds, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tiffany & Co, has an offtake agreement in place for the proj-ect’s mine life, expected to last for more than

Canadianprod

on the

By PAul Zimnisky


canaDa

riseuction


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25 years. Lace produced approximately 750,000 carats between 1901 and 1931, until the Great Depression rendered the mine uneconomic.

Alrosa’s (RTS: ALRS) Botuobinska-ya mine is nearing completion, and first mining is planned for the middle of next year. Located in Russia’s Sakha region of northeastern Siberia, Botuobinskaya is expected to produce 1.5 million carats annually and has a resource of over 70 million contained carats.

Rio Tinto’s (NYSE: RIO; LSE: RIO) Bunder project represents the first di-amond discovery in India in 40 years. Bunder could be in production by 2017, with a production profile of 700,000 carats annually, and a resource of 27 mil-lion carats.

Lukoil’s (RTS: LKOH) Grib mine, which began production this summer, and Alrosa’s Karpinskogo, mine which started production in October, are the first two non-alluvial diamond mines with annual production of greater than 1 million carats to be put into produc-tion since Canada’s Diavik mine came onstream in 2003. The mines, located in Russia, are expected to produce 4 mil-lion carats per year and 2.2 million carats

per year, respectively.As Gahcho Kué and Renard are being

built, some of the largest mines in the world are being exhausted. In Botswana, Orapa and Jwaneng, arguably the world’s two most important diamond mines (mines with 50+ year lives), have less than 15 years of production left at cur-rent economics.

In Australia, the Ellendale mine, which is the largest producer of fancy yellow diamonds in the world, is set to go on care-and-maintenance by year-end as reserves have been exhausted.

At the alluvial Marange fields in Zim-babwe, a site estimated to produce 8 mil-lion carats of diamonds this year, much of the easily accessible loose surface gravel has been mined. That leaves mostly hard conglomerate rock requiring additional capital spending to continue operations, an investment that most of the miners

there have indicated they will not make.It’s worth noting that in addition to

Gahcho Kué and Renard starting pro-duction in the next four years, a further boost to Canadian production will come from Ekati, where a new mine plan is estimated to take production from 2.2 million carats annually worth US$630 million, to 5.9 million carats worth at least US$1.2 billion, by 2018. The pri-mary source of additional production will come from Ekati’s Misery pipe. Ekati is majority owned by Dominion Dia-mond (TSX: DDC), which upped its stake in the mine to 90% in July.

— Paul Zimnisky is an independent dia-mond industry analyst and consultant. He can be reached at [email protected] in this article is strictly for infor-mational purposes and should not be consid-ered investment advice.

Exploring Diamond Opportunities in Canada

TSXV:NAR

[email protected]

northarrowminerals@narminerals

Suite 960, 789 West Pender Street Vancouver, BC V6C 1H2 Tel: 604.668.8355

The Gahcho Kué development in the Northwest Territories. The project

is owned by De Beers (51%) and Mountain Province Diamonds (49%).

Photo credit: Mountain Province Diamonds




http://www.northarrowminerals.com

http://www.facebook.com/northarrowminerals

http://www.twitter.com/@narminerals

I N C A N A D A

After going into hibernation in the wake of the Great Recession, dia-mond juniors are slowly rousing and getting back into the field.

Inspired by Kennady Diamonds’ (TSXV: KDI) success at its Kennady North project, new Canadian diamond mines that are being financed and built, solid rough diamond prices, and a looming supply/demand gap, at least ten companies have staked land or made deals to acquire diamond projects in Canada over the past year or so.

While the overall picture for diamonds is positive, the interest is surprising, as the wider exploration sector remains in the dumps.

But Mike Powers, the CEO of Proxima Dia-monds, a diamond prospect generator that ex-pects to list before the end of year through a merger with Adent Capital (TSXV: ANT.P), sees cause for hope.

“I think the market has begun to appreciate the value of exploration,” Power says, pointing to Kennady Diamonds’ success.

“It’s risky, but the opportunity is there in diamonds in the NWT right now. You have four operating mines with mills and infrastructure, so a ready market for product and for resources,”

By AlishA hiyAte

rushmini-stakingCanada’s

Top two photos: North Arrow Minerals’ Pikoo project in Saskatchewan; Below: Proxima Diamonds has a portfolio of 17

projects in the Northwest Territories.Photo credits: North Arrow Minerals; Proxima Diamonds



I N C A N A D A


he adds. “The area has an excellent database — it’s only been explored for 20 years. . . so all the pieces I think are in place for new discoveries to be made and exploited.”

The new wave of diamond explorers is seeking to lower the cost and risk associated with Arctic diamond exploration by capitalizing on work that’s already been done. Existing data collected over the past two decades are key to their explora-tion strategies.

Proxima, for example, is using GGL Resources’ (TSXV: GGL) extensive database, while Randy Turner’s Canterra Minerals (TSXV: CTM) has a proprietary database compiled over 15 years of exploration in the southern Slave province.

“Unlike back in the nineties, when we went out and staked huge blocks of land, we are now target-specific because we’ve narrowed it down based on mineral trains and airborne geophy-ics,” Turner said in an interview in June.

Turner, whose Winspear Diamonds discovered the Snap Lake mine (now owned by De Beers), announced his return to diamonds in April.

Diamond explorers are also seeking ground close to exist-ing mines where even small-scale discoveries have a chance of being rewarded.

Margaret Lake Diamonds (TSXV: DIA), which start-ed trading in April, has picked up land near De Beers’ and Mountain Province Diamonds’ (TSX: MPV; NYSE-MKT: MDM) Gahcho Kué mine, which is under construction, and Kennady Diamonds’ ad-jacent project.

“What we’re looking at up there is the potential, in theory, for additional feed to other producers,” Margaret Lake presi-dent and CEO Paul Brockington told The Northern Miner in June. “In other words, you don’t necessarily need a standalone mine… so the hurdle that you have to get to in terms of tonnage and grade would be different than if you were trying to start from scratch.”

Ken Armstrong, president and CEO of North Arrow Minerals (TSXV: NAR), which last year amassed a porto-folio of promising projects that have seen significant investment, says the area-play phenomenon is in the blood of explorers because it often pays off.

“With diamonds, you need land to eval-uate things,” Armstrong said in October. “Staking close to existing deposits is not a bad strategy — that’s how Diavik was found.”

Kennady DiamondsKennady Diamonds’ Kennady North project, 280 km northeast of Yellownife,

in the Northwest Territories, has consistently surpassed ex-pectations since the junior was spun out of Mountain Prov-ince Diamonds in mid-2012.

As Kennady has learned more about the geology of the Kelvin and Faraday kimberlites at the project, the expected tonnage of the project has grown to 9 to 12 million tonnes.

Until recently, the grade had also surprised on the upside: a 4.3-tonne sample from Kelvin last year returned 18.57 carats

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Logging core from Kennady Diamonds’ Kelvin kimberlite.

Photo credit: Kennady Diamonds



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I N C A N A D A


of diamonds for a grade of 4.32 carats per tonne.However, this fall, a 25-tonne sample from Kelvin returned

44.64 carats of diamonds for a grade of 1.79 carats per tonne. While that grade is still quite high, it disappointed the market and prompted Kennady’s stock to fall by $2.50 to $5.49.

Kennady president and CEO Patrick Evans, however, was pleased with the grade, saying in October that it falls within the company’s previous guidance of 2 carats per tonne. (When the results of last year’s 4.3-tonne sample are combined with the mini-bulk sample, the overall grade rises to 2.16 carats per tonne.)

The Kelvin and Faraday kimberlites lie northeast of the

Gahcho Kué kimberlites, along the same structural fault.Whereas it was previously thought that the kimberlites

were principally northeast-trending dyke structures with a small pipe at the north end of Kelvin, the geological picture changed dramatically this year. Drilling has shown that Kelvin is a horizontal-lying, north-plunging, banana-shaped kimberlite tube, with a kimberlite sheet lying to the south-west and the Faraday kimberlite to the northeast. Between Kelvin and Faraday, there’s thought to be a feeder pipe, Evans explains.

“The theory is that, encountering the structural fault, the pipe didn’t erupt at surface, instead — for lack of a more tech-nical phrase — it squirted kimberlite to the southwest into this fault structure, forming the Kelvin pipe,” he says. “Then, as the fault structure thinned towards the southwest, it formed the Kelvin sheet.”

The Kelvin pipe extends for 610 metres along strike and 100 to 200 metres vertically, and is 30 to 50 metres wide. It remains open to the north.

An initial resource estimate for Kelvin is due in mid-2015. The company is also planning to take a 500 to 700-tonne bulk sample next year.

More NWT explorationTen kilometres north of Gahcho Kué, Margaret Lake Dia-monds is earning up to 70% of the Margaret Lake property. The junior completed an airborne geophysical survey at the project this summer, where previous work has already identi-fied three targets: A286, A294 and Drop Lake.

Margaret Lake also struck a deal in August to option up to 49% of Canterra Minerals’ Marlin project, adjacent to Kennady Diamonds’ land package to the northwest. Till sampling this sum-mer by project operator Canterra recovered a 1-mm by 1-mm by 1.4-mm off-white, modified octahedral diamond. Several indi-cator minerals were also recovered, and an airborne geophysical survey was conducted on the northern portion of Marlin.

Canterra has several other projects (Hilltop, King, Prism and Gwen) that have seen targeted till sampling this summer within known kimberlite indicator mineral (KIM) trains.

Southeast of and adjacent to Gahcho Kué, Prima Dia-monds (TSXV: PMD) (previously Prima Fluorspar) in June picked up the Godpeed Lake project, where there are four kimberlite targets. In August, Prima added the Munn Lake

from Left: Collecting samples

at one of Proxima Diamonds’ projects

in the Northwest Territories; Core

drilling at Kennady Diamonds’ Kennady

North project. Photo credit: Proxima Diamonds;

Kennady Diamonds


http://www.tundraair.com

I N C A N A D A


project to its portfolio. The former SouthernEra Resources project is 35 km east of Snap Lake and adjacent to Canterra’s Gwen project, and hosts the diamondiferous Munn Lake sill, diamond-bearing boulders and several unsourced KIM trains.

Prima’s latest acquisition, in October, is in Quebec, north of Stornoway Diamond’s (TSX: SWY) Renard diamond devel-opment. A recent regional airborne magnetic survey over the Orion diamond properties identified seven kimberlite targets.

To begin its exploration programs next year, Prima is look-ing to raise up to $2.5 million.

Proxima Diamonds has assembled a portfolio of 17 proper-ties that host six known kimberlites in the Northwest Territo-ries. The company has three priority targets, including Sancy, north of Dominion Diamond’s (TSX: DDC; NYSE: DDC) Ekati mine, and Hortensia and Tavernier near Gahcho Kué.

Denendah Exploration and Mining, or DEMCo, a Dene First Nations company, has acquired several prospective dia-mond claims, including seven kimberlite pipes discovered by De Beers. (Canterra’s Gwen surrounds its CL 25 and CL 175 kimberlites). The company is looking for JV partners to advance the projects.

Lastly, North Arrow tested seven targets this year at the Redemption project, 32 km southwest of Ekati, but did not hit kimberlite. The company is earning up 55% of Redemption from Arctic Star Diamonds (TSXV: ADD) and will revisit the project next year.

SaskatchewanLast year, North Arrow discovered a new diamond district at its 80%-owned Pikoo project in Saskatchewan. (Stornoway Diamond owns the remainder.)

Drilling at PK150, a 10- to 15-metre-wide kimberlite dyke that extends at least 75 metres along strike, delivered excep-tional results in November. A 210-kg sample returned 23 com-mercial-sized diamonds for a grade of 1.34 carats per tonne.

This year, the company completed a $1-million till-sam-pling program at Pikoo, where four KIM trains have now been identified.

The company plans to conduct follow-up drilling at Pikoo in February.

Since North Arrow’s discovery, Pikoo has spawned its own area play.

In October, Alto Ventures (TSXV: ATV) completed

a till-sampling program on its GEFA and Fisher properties, which are adjacent to Pikoo. Alto is earning a 60% interest in the GEFA claims and 100% of Fisher.

Strike Graphite (TSXV: SRK) struck a deal in May to acquire an 80% stake in two land packages in the Sask Cra-ton near Pikoo. The company is merging with Athabasca Nuclear (TSXV: ASC) in an all-share deal that was expected to close in October.

And Regina-based private company GEM Oil completed a till-sampling program on its GEM15 project in the Pikoo district in October.

Continued on page 22

CSE : TAI S a u n in 61,198,801h res o tsta d g:Contact: Raymond Davies Phone: 416 491 6771 Email: [email protected] Website: www.talmoradiamond.com

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from Left: examining drill core from Kennady Diamonds’ Kelvin kimberlite; Canterra Minerals’ senior geologist David Gale till sampling in the Southern Slave.Photo credit: Kennady Diamonds; Canterra Minerals



http://www.talmoradiamond.com


I N C A N A D A

By the time Gahcho Kué achieves first production in the second half of 2016, more than two decades will have passed since the discovery of the 5034 kimberlite at the project by Mountain Province

Diamonds (TSX: MPV; NYSE-MKT: MDM) in 1995.But time hasn’t eroded the value of the project, now owned

by De Beers (51%) and Mountain Province Diamonds (49%).After Diavik and Jwaneng, Gahcho Kué is expected to rank

third in the world in terms of profit margin. A March feasibility update pegged the project’s post-tax net

present value at $1 billion using a 10% discount rate, and its internal rate of return at 32.6%.

And Mountain Province Diamonds postulates that Gahcho Kué could one day qualify as a Tier 1 asset with a mine life of over 20 years and an in situ value of at least $20 billion.

The 5034, Tuzo and Hearne kimberlites at the project are all open at depth, but Tuzo has the greatest volume potential

as it widens at depth. Drilling by the partners has shown the kimberlite extends to at least 750 metres.

The dream of achieving Tier 1 asset status is still a ways off, as the partners focus on building the $858.5-million mine, located 300 km northeast of Yellowknife and 90 km east of De Beers’ Snap Lake mine.

Construction began in December 2013 and is expected to continue until the end of 2015. At the end of September, con-struction at the mine was 43% complete.

With its land-use permit issued in August and final approval of its Type A water licence in September, the partners have all the permits they need to finish the job.

To pay for its portion of construction, Mountain Province completed a $100-million equity raise in October of 20 million shares priced at $5 per share. The company now has enough cash to cover its obligations at Gahcho Kué for 2014, and is expecting a US$370-million senior secured debt package to follow before

the end of the year.Once in production, the open-pit mine will pro-

duce 4.5 million carats a year over 12 years for a total of 53.4 million carats. Diamond revenues are estimated at US$149.66 per carat.

Probable reserves in the 5034, Tuzo and Hearne kimberlites stand at 35.4 million tonnes grading 1.57 carats per tonne. Inferred resources add anoth-er 18.5 million carats in 11.3 million tonnes grading 1.64 carats per tonne, which could extend Gahcho Kué’s mine life by several years. There’s also another 1.1 million carats in indicated resources.

After the equity financing in mid-October, BMO Capital Markets mining analyst Ed Sterck had an “outperform” (speculative) rating and a $6.15 target price on Mountain Province stock.

At the end of October, Mountain Province shares traded at $5.27 in a 52-week range of $4.90-$6.08. Post-financing, the company has 135.2 million shares outstanding.

nears halfway mark at Gahcho Kuéconstruction

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t’s been nearly two years since Dominion Diamonds (TSX: DDC; NYSE: DDC)

picked up a majority interest in the Ekati diamond mine from BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP; LSE: BLT) for around US$550 million, and the company has been consistently impressing with its efforts to improve operations at the mining complex ever since.

Following the acquisition, Dominion has been working to adjust the recovery circuits at Ekati’s plant, and the program has resulted in impressive financials. Carats recovered in the first six months of fiscal 2015 were estimated to be 30% ahead of plan, with rough diamond production pegged at 2 million tonnes grading 0.67 carat per tonne for around 1.4 million total carats recovered.

During the second quarter, Ekati recorded sales of US$170.3 million, with around 600,000 carats sold at an average price of US$308 per carat.

To achieve improved diamond recoveries, Do-minion has applied greater discipline to the mainte-nance and operations of the high-pressure grinding roll (HPGR) within the process plant. As a result, less coarse feed is being pushed through to the heavy media separator (HMS) modules, which has had a positive impact on the overall liberation of diamonds from kimberlite plant feed.

“We’ve improved the heavy-media separation at the plant. Frankly, it was the opinion of our con-

By mAtthew

keevil


canaDa

DominionEkati

unearths plenty of upside at

Dominion Diamonds’ Ekati mine, in the Northwest Territories; Above: Exploration at the Jay project at Ekati. Credit: Dominion Diamond/ Dave Brosha

I N C A N A D A

I

sultants that the heavy media being run at such a high rate, like it was previously, was actually resulting in the loss of diamonds,” noted chair-man and CEO Robert Gannicott during a pre-sentation at the Dundee Diamond Conference in Toronto in early October.

“That’s been consistent with our experience dealing with the re-process and reagents. With very little work over a short amount of time you can see that we’ve improved the operation well beyond what we thought we had purchased,” he said.

And Ekati continues to grow, with Dominion identifying an exploration target at its Misery

Gahcho Kué

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South and Misery Southwest satellite pipes that it converted into inferred resources in mid-July. The new targets host around 3.9 million tonnes averaging 1.3 carats per tonne for 5 million contained carats. The company is incorporating Misery — which lies around 30 km from the Ekati camp — into its operation, with stripping under way and full-year production expected from an open pit by 2016.

“In my view, we bought Ekati because of a past, a present, and a future,” Gannicott continued. “I would say that the past is great because it is the result of staking a very large piece of ground with two very significant geological trends that have hosted nine extremely valuable diamond orebod-ies. There are another four in what I’d qualify the develop-ment stage, and another three in advanced evaluation. The other thing that came with it was a very well-built piece of infrastructure, with a processing plant that was built to be greatly expanded.”

In fact, Dominion notes that reserves and resources at Ekati will still not fully use its processing capacity of roughly 4.35 million tonnes per year. The company plans to use the

spare capacity to process additional material from the Koala North underground and Misery Northeast pit, as well as coarse ore-reject stockpiles. It’s notable that none of this additional material is included in the current mine plan.

The stockpiles are another upside opportunity Dominion acquired that wasn’t viewed as a value-add proposition at the time of the BHP deal. Coarse ore has been stockpiled at Ekati since the start of production in 1998. These rejects are estimated to total up to 4.5 million tonnes. Based on stone size distributions and recovery data, this material has an overall grade ranging from 0.2 to 0.6 carat per tonne.

“Most diamond plants take anything of significant size that actually floats in the first dense-media separation back into the circuit and re-crush it to liberate more diamonds,” Gannicott explained. “In order to achieve maximum veloc-ity, BHP opted to run these valuable orebodies through very quickly to ‘get the cream off the top,’ which means there are large quantities of coarse ore rejects that have proven to be very valuable feed stock. We didn’t expect that when we purchased the asset, but we’re very glad to have it.”

Jay projectBesides mill improvements, Dominion is focused on its Jay project, which Gannicott labels “the long-term future mine life of Ekati.” The company has invested around US$16 mil-lion at Jay this year, which involves the “development of the largest diamondiferous resource in North America.” Domin-ion figures that an open pit at Jay could extend Ekati’s life by 10 years beyond scheduled closure in 2019, with the potential

for underground mining beyond that.BHP had explored Jay’s development potential,

but the major was hesitant since the deposit sat underneath a lake at depths of between 30 metres and 40 metres. Gannicott says those water depths present a “large-scale engineering challenge,” but Dominion has tailored a different strategy.

“The Jay pipe is large and the open pit will be slightly bigger than a kilometre in diameter,” he explained. “BHP assumed they’d be dealing with

Clockwise from top left: rough Diamonds from ekati; Lac de Sauvage/Jay project area; Drill core from Jay.

Photo credit: Dominion Diamond/Dave Brosha Photography


I N C A N A D A


that water depth generally, but we realized that most of the lake is actually very shallow. So we proposed a different scenario with a longer dyke that’s only typically in water about four metres deep.”

The company intends to complete a developer’s assess-ment report (DAR) and a prefeasibility study for Jay by the

end of November. The DAR submission is the next step in the environmental assessment process. Dominion expects to have a decision on it from the Northwest Territories govern-ment by the end of 2015.

On Oct. 15, Dominion announced it had further ex-panded its interest in Ekati through another deal with Chuck Fipke, which saw the company pick up an additional 8.9% interest in the Core zone and an additional 6.53% interest in the Buffer zone. The purchase price for the Core interest was US$55.4 million, while the price for the Buffer zone was around US$14.35 million. The deal gives Dominion an 88.89% interest in the Core zone and a 65.3% interest in the Buffer zone.

“One thing I’ll say about past exploration efforts is that they were very much geared towards finding things as quick-ly as possible,” Gannicott continued. “As such, they were predominantly confined to geophysical programs, which perhaps ignores the fact that the early discoveries were made on the basis of geochemical work. We’re doing some really serious exploration between Sable on the north end and the main clusters to the south.”

Dominion’s second production pillar is a 40% interest in the Diavik mine, managed by majority partner Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO; LON: RIO), which has also benefited from recent operational improvements. The companies have fo-cused on improving availabilities, removing plant bottle-necks and increasing utilization of equipment, which have contributed this year to a boost in tonnage processed and carats recovered.

Based on an updated mine plan, the partners expect to process 2.2 million tonnes of material and produce roughly 6.5 million carats at Diavik this year. Mining activities will be exclusively underground with around 700,000 tonnes expected to be sourced from the A-154 North pipe, around 500,000 tonnes from the A-154 South pipe and 800,000 tonnes from the A-418 pipe. Results of a prefeasibility study on the A-21 pipe are anticipated by the end of the year, which could offer further upside at Diavik.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Edward Sterck — who

maintains a stock “outperform” rating on Dominion along with a $20 share price target — notes that to meet its production guidance for the year, Diavik would only need to produce 1.1 million carats in the fourth quarter, well below the year-to-date average quarterly production of 1.9 million carats. “As such, there is significant potential for

Diavik to beat production guidance,” Sterck says.

In the second quarter, Dominion reported sales from Diavik of US$107 million, compared to US$91.3 mil-lion in the same period in 2013. Sales totalled around 1 million carats for an average price of US$112 per carat, which compares to 700,000 carats for an average price of US$130 per

carat during the second quarter of 2013.Dominion shares have traded within a 52-week range of

$12.89 and $16.83, and closed at $16.24 per share at the time of writing. The company reported US$384 million in net cash at the end of July, and maintains 85 million shares outstanding.— Matthew Keevil is a Vancouver-based staff writer with The Northern Miner.

With very little work over a short amount of time, we’ve improved the operation well beyond what we thought we had purchased.’

– Bob Gannicott, chairman and CEO of Dominion Diamonds


http://www.pdiam.com

I N C A N A D A


NunavutOver in Nunavut, near Repulse Bay, North Arrow is earning up to 80% of the advanced Qilalugaq project from Storno-way Diamond.

The project already hosts an inferred resource of 26.1 mil-lion carats in 48.8 million tonnes grading 0.54 carat per tonne in the Q1-4 kimberlite.

All North Arrow needs now to assess the potential of the 12.5-hectare pipe — the largest of eight kimberlites at Qilalugaq — is the value of the diamonds it contains.

This summer, the junior completed a 1,500-tonne mini-bulk sample at Q1-4 in order to collect a parcel of at least 500 stones for a valuation.

If processing of the bulk sample goes smoothly, the valua-tion results could be released by the end of the first quarter. Q1-4 could contain a population of fancy yellow stones, which would boost the project’s value.

Peregrine Diamonds’ (TSX PGD) Chidliak project, on Baffin Island, is easily Nunavut’s most advanced diamond proj-ect, with 68 kimberlite bodies discovered since 2008.

Peregrine released an inferred resource for the CH-6 kim-berlite at Chidliak in May: 7.5 million carats in 2.89 million tonnes grading 2.58 carats per tonne.

The resource extends to 250 metres depth.The company is working to add resources at CH-6, with a

resource update expected before year-end, and to delineate resources at CH-7 and CH-44 on the way to a preliminary economic assessment for Chidliak in 2016.

Bulk samples are planned for CH-6, CH-7 and CH-44 next year.

An initial valuation of a 1,013.5-carat parcel of CH-6 dia-monds in February revealed an average price of US$213 per carat. The company expects that CH-7 and CH-44 could host diamonds of similar quality.

In order to advance its bulk-sampling program, Peregrine completed a $15.1-million rights offering priced at 21¢ per unit in October.

While the dilutive financing was controversial,Tom Pere-goodoff, Peregrine’s executive vice-president of business devel-opment, said that the company had to consider all its options given current market conditions.

“We had a choice to make and it really boiled down to trying to preserve the value of the asset, which is primarily Chidliak, for our current shareholders, or allow new money to come in at what we felt were probably undervalued (market prices),” he said in October.

Chidliak has the potential to be a very high-margin project, with rock value of US$550-600 per tonne at CH-6, he noted.

Also in Nunavut, Churchill Diamond is planning to launch a major program after it lists in early 2015. The company has acquired Diamonds North’s (now Adamera Minerals [TSXV: ADZ]) Amaruk project. Twenty-four of the 30 kim-berlites identified on the project, now renamed Pelly Bay, contain diamonds.

Stornoway is recruiting for a Chief Mine Geologist. Reporting to the Technical Services Manager, the Chief Mine Geologist will be responsible for managing the mine geology department and overseeing all geological surveying, mine exploration and production geology activities, including production reconciliations against plan, for a combined open pit and underground operation. Experience in Canadian diamond mining operations, up to date understanding of the geological characteristics and emplacement mechanisms of kimberlites are required. The Chief Mine Geologist will work closely with the company’s kimberlite petrology group based in North Vancouver, and the project’s onsite mineral processing staff. Minimum BSc in geology and 10 years of experience in mining geology in a production setting required.

Position: Chief Mine GeologistLocation: Mine SiteReference: SWY-AFF-TS04-60

To apply online, please send your resume and indicate the reference SWY-AFF-TS04-60 Chief Mine Geologist to:

Les Diamants Stornoway (Canada) inc. Human Resources Department

http://www.stornowaydiamonds.com/carrieres/

Les Diamants Stornoway (Canada) inc.1111, St-Charles Street West, Suite 400 - Tower Ouest, Longueuil, Quebec J4K 5G4 Tel : (450) 616-5555 Fax : (450) 674-2012 TSX : SWY www.stornowaydiamonds.com

For additional information, please contact Mrs. Genevieve Piquion, at [email protected]

We appreciate all expressed interest in this position, however, only the candidates selected for interview will be contacted.

Continued from page 17

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advertiser’s indexAurora Geosciences Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Foraco International SA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Kennady Diamonds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11North Arrow Minerals Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21Saskatchewan Research Council. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Shore Gold Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Stornoway Diamond Corp.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 24Talmora Diamond Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Tundra Airborne Surveys Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Core drilling at Peregrine Diamonds’ Chidliak project in Nunavut.Photo credit: Peregrine Diamonds



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