Frontier Diamonds Ltd, an Australian-listed mining company exploring for diamonds in South Africa, has said that it recovered diamonds from uncalcretised kimberlite material uncovered when it intersected kimberlite during blast hole drilling at its Bellsbank diamond project in South Africa recently.

The intersection of kimberlite occurred at a depth of 27metres.

The Company said that this comes a few weeks after geologist Stephen Henry Le Roux of SLR Consulting submitted a competent person’s report(CPR) which confirmed the presence of a kimberlite pipe deposit, around 0.35 hectares in size with a possible fissure extension to the north and south, within the Bellsbank Kimberlite Pipe Exploration project area.The estimated grade of the pipe is between 10-30 carats per hundred tonnes.

Frontier said that the Bellsbank project lies 10 kilometres from it’s 74%-owned Sedibeng Diamond Mine.

Currently, ore from Bellsbank is to be treated at a rate of around 20,000 tonnes a month at the recently completed dual-purpose tailings and bulk sample processing plant at Sedibeng.

Till date, the biggest stone recovered from a plant commissioning sample taken from shallower, calcretisedBellsbank material was 1.45 carats, while the quality of the diamonds recovered from that sample appears comparable with gems from the nearby Sedibeng operations, Frontier reported.

Jan Louw, Frontier’s CEO said, “We are now in a position to rapidly access the primary ore body and conduct a proper bulk sample, followed by processing of this material at our new Sedibeng dual-purpose plant.”

He added that the bulk sampling will enable a detailed economic assessment of the Bellsbank pipe, which will be supported by all the “historic and current exploration data” contained in the CPR.

The report states that the Bellsbank pipe was first discovered in the early 1980s by De Beers. Records show that De Beers reported the presence of two closely spaced kimberlite bodies overlaid by 30 m of calcrete overburden.

In the mid-90s, the project was acquired by Botswana Diamondfields, and after it allowed the lease to expire a few years later, the entire area passed through other owners before being acquired first by Petra and later Sedi Diamonds between 2014 and 2017. Frontier acquired Sedi in 2017.

Once a sufficient quantity of planned bulk sample material is processed over the next few months, Frontier will commence detailed economic evaluation of Bellsbank, including mineral inventory estimates and mine plan design,.

Pic caption: Diamonds recovered from calcretisedBellsbank sample