Mountain Province recovers 95-carat diamond

Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. [MPVD-TSX, NYSE] on Wednesday May 30 announced the recovery of a high-quality 95-carat diamond from its Gahcho Kue diamond mine in the Canadian Northwest Territories.

Mountain Province shares advanced on the news, rising 1.46% or $0.05 to $3.48.  The 52-week range is $5.10 and $2.97.

The stone is a white octahedron of top clarity and will be sold in the next tender sale in late June. It is the largest gem-quality diamond recovered from Gahcho Kue during its first two years of production and the fourth largest stone overall.

The Gahcho Kue diamond mine is a joint venture between De Beers Canada Inc. (51%) and Mountain Province (49%).

It is a fly-in-fly out operation located 280 km northeast of Yellowknife, N.W.T.

The ramp up to production began in early August, 2016.

Located at Kennady Lake, Gahcho Kue is an open pit operation that aims to mine three kimberlites in sequence. Average annual production is targeted at 4.5 million carats annually.

It is the third diamond mine in Canada for De Beers. (The others are the Snap Lake Mine and the Victor Mine).

The recovery of the 95-carat diamond could be indicative of the potential for further large stone recoveries, particularly if the stone was recovered from the Hearne deposit where ore mining has just begun, during the second quarter of 2018.

Mountain Province did not indicate the provenance of the stone. “However, we’d expect the net proceeds from this individual stone to be relatively immaterial, likely less than $3 million,” Scotiabank wrote in an investment report.

It is worth noting that Mountain Province needs to compensate De Beers for its 51% stake in fancy and special stones.

Mountain Province recently completed the acquisition of Kennady Diamonds Inc. [KDI-TSXV] by way of a court-approved plan of arrangement.

Kennady Diamonds controls 100% of the Kennady North diamond project located in the Northwest Territories. Kennedy North is adjacent to the Gahcho Kue Mine. Prior to the acquisition, Kennady had focused on expanding its high-grade diamond resource along the Kelvin-Faraday kimberlite corridor as well as identifying new kimberlites outside the corridor.

To date, an indicated resource of 13.62 million carats of diamonds contained  in 8.50 million tonnes of kimberlite, with a grade of 1.60 carats per tonne and an average value of US$63 per carat, has been defined for the Kelvin kimberlite and an inferred resource of 5.02 million carats contained in 3.27 million tonnes of kimberlite with a grade of 1.54 carats per tonne and an average grade of US$98 per carat, has been defined for the Faraday kimberlites, using a one-millimetre diamond bottom cut-off size.