Star Diamond Corporation announced recently that Rio Tinto Exploration Canada Inc (RTEC) had discovered two macrodiamonds at the Corporation’s K120 Kimberlite, which forms part of the Orion North kimberlite cluster.

Star said that the discovery of these two diamonds, the largest of which is a 0.552 carat sized fragment of a larger stone, while reporting the microdiamond results was extremely encouraging.

In 2017, Star Diamond acquired from Newmont Corporation all of its participating interest in the Fort à la Corne joint venture and simultaneously entered into an Option Agreement with RTEC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto, pursuant to which the Company granted to RTEC an option to earn up to a 60% interest in the Company’s Fort à la Corne mineral properties (including the Project) on the terms and conditions contained in the Option Agreement.

RTEC, while reporting the microdiamond study results of its drilling, said that it recovered 323 diamonds from the current consignment of drill core.

Star Diamond’s Senior Vice President Exploration and Development, George Read, stated: “The occurrence of a 0.55 carat diamond in a microdiamond sample is anomalous and speaks to the potential for a coarse diamond size frequency distribution and supports previous evaluation work conducted by Star Diamond Corporation on the Orion North Kimberlites.”

The Corporation reported that since 2004 it has completed 45 core holes and 16 large diameter drill holes on K120. A total of 3,415 macrodiamonds weighing a total of 298 carats were recovered from the LDD samples. The Corporation’s K120 LDD diamond parcel includes 19 diamonds over 1 carat and the three largest stones are 7.5, 3.8 and 3.3 carats, respectively.

Read added, “These recent results from RTEC’s drill program are extremely encouraging and emphasize the evaluation potential of the extensive volumes of kimberlite outside of the present focus on the Star and Orion South kimberlites.”

Star Diamond currently expects that all or substantially all of the bulk samples collected during 2019 by RTEC under the agreement will be processed through to final diamond recovery and reported over the balance of calendar 2020, provided that there are not any unexpected material delays in this process including issues arising from COVID-19.

In a separate announcement, Star Diamond also released its results for the three months ended March 31, 2020, stating that it recorded a net loss of $1.0 million or $0.00 per share (basic and fully diluted) compared to a net loss of $0.9 million or $0.00 per share for the same period in 2019.

“The losses during these quarters were due to operating costs and exploration and evaluation expenditures incurred by the Company exceeding interest income earned on cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments,” Star Diamond explained.

As of May 7, 2020, the Company had approximately $6.6 million in cash and cash equivalents (excluding $0.6 million in restricted cash). A portion of the Company’s cash and cash equivalents will be used for 2020 programs, it reported.