BOD recovers quality diamonds in SA
Botswana Diamonds (BOD), a public listed diamond explorer, has announced the recovery of four high-quality diamonds from drill samples taken at Thorny River in Limpopo, South Africa.
The sample, which covered a 71 metre radius, also showed abundant kimberlitic indicators, which suggests there could be plenty more where the ‘fantastic four’ came from.
Highlighting the significance of such a discovery, BOD Chairperson, John Teeling noted it is extremely rare to recover so many top class diamonds and promising diamond indicators in such a small sample size.
“The diamonds are of good quality. It is unusual to recover diamonds from a small sample of narrow reverse circulation drill holes so it bodes well for the potential of the Thorny River project,” said Teeling.
He further said it was even more encouraging that the size of the kimberlite from which the diamonds were recovered, is itself expanding.
“We will commence drilling the area between the two blows towards the end of August,” he said.
The recovered diamonds are said to be of notable good colour and clarity and are of commercial quality as well as in high demand by the market.
In May, BOD announced that a total of 71 metres of kimberlite was intersected in 12 percussion holes in the newly discovered River kimberlite extension, with an additional 19 metres of kimberlitic breccias.
Samples from these holes were taken at one metre intervals and twelve of these totalling about 320kg were selected and submitted to an independent processing facility for assessment through screening, dense media separation, and hand sorting.