Botswana Diamonds has announced that the results of the first small sample of kimberlite concentrate from the Frischgewaagt Project, located in South Africa indicate an estimated diamond grade range estimated between 20-270 carats per hundred tons (cpht). The Company described this as “an excellent result” which “shows the potential” of the project.

The results are based on the recovery of 223 microdiamonds have been recovered from 160kg of kimberlite drill core recovered from the nine core holes drilled on Frischgewaagt where both magmatic kimberlite (associated with dykes) and volcanoclastic (associated with pipes) were recently discovered.

The Company said that was at a bottom cut off of 0.6 mm, with the largest stone being a white transparent crystal diamond falling in the -1.18+0.85 mm sieve. The modelling took cognisance of the results from the earlier bulk processing of surface and near surface material. The wide range in the estimated grade reflects the small sample size.

Frischgewaagt is on a 6km kimberlite dyke/pipe complex averaging 1.34 m in width.  The project is also 2km along strike from the nearby Marsfontein Mine which was 0.4 hectares in size producing at an average grade of 172 cpht at a bottom cut off of 1.2 mm.  Marsfontein achieved a payback of capital in under 4 days.

A detailed ground based geophysics study over 40 km is nearing completion on both Frischgewaagt and the adjoining properties with a second drill programme planned to commence next month.

John Teeling, Chairman commented, "This is an excellent result and shows the potential of Frischgewaagt. We need more drill samples to refine the grade estimate. This will be done in the coming months. Earlier work indicated diamond values of over US$200/ct. The geophysics work which is almost complete and the drilling to follow is targeted to produce an Inferred Resource by the end of the year."