Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. announced yesterday that the winter exploration programme at the Kennady North Project has begun and the focus will be focus on drill-testing several combined indicator and geophysical targets located west and southwest of the Hearne kimberlite, which is part of the Gahcho Kué Mine.

The Company said that about 2,000 meters of drilling will be done to test the exploration targets which are among those freshly identified through a process of combining the freshly-compiled in-house data acquired since the start of the Kennady North Project and certain other proprietary data relevant to the same project that was also acquired from GGL Resources Inc. through a lease and one-time cash payment.

Further, the combined database was then linked to a recently-completed glacial mapping and sampling program that incorporated a LIDAR survey of the project area to create a glacial till ranking scheme. This has been additionally mapped with geophysical data to generate target areas for follow-up sampling and drilling.

Vice President of Exploration for Mountain Province Dr. Tom McCandless comments, "In addition to the successful advancement of the Kelvin and Faraday Kimberlites, we are very pleased to have completed the compilation of all the regional exploration data into a consolidated database which will provide the basis for all future work on our wholly owned properties near the GK Mine. We have also augmented our database with new interpretations of the surficial geology in order to prioritize all historical, as well as newly acquired data."

The Company also reported that the process of caustic fusion recovery of microdiamonds from core recovered in drilling programs conducted on Faraday 2 in 2017 and 2018 generated 10.4 carats of commercial-sized diamonds.

President and Chief Executive Officer for Mountain Province Stuart Brown commented: "Our microdiamond results from the northwest extension of Faraday 2 are excellent but not unexpected, as kimberlites within the Kelvin-Faraday corridor exhibit a remarkable consistency of grade across internal lithologies. Our early indications are that the inclusion of the northwest extension into Faraday 2 will contribute substantially to the value of this resource within our Kennady portfolio."

The microdiamond results will be incorporated into an updated resource estimate for Faraday 2 that will be completed in the coming weeks. Drilling of select exploration targets is expected to start in early March.