Kennady Diamonds Inc has announced the results of its recent drilling programmes at its Kennady North project, some of the last few that it is carrying out before activity at the site comes to a close due to the onset of winter.

There were three key focus areas in the drilling: to define continuity of the Kelvin kimberlite beyond the current geological model at the Northwest Lobe; to define continuity of the Faraday 2 kimberlite beyond the current geological model at the West Lobe; and to test exploration targets at the Doyle kimberlite.

The company reports that it intercepted 127 metres of kimberlite at Kelvin North beyond the current geological model which confirmed that Kelvin continues trending from north to northwest. President and CEO Patrick Evans commented, “That extends the total strike of the Kelvin kimberlite from approximately 600 meters to over 720 meters.”

Evans also said that the drilling confirmed continuity of the kimberlite pipe, which is trending from northwest to west at Faraday 2. “This extends the strike from approximately 240 meters to nearly 300 meters.”

Based on these new developments, Kennady Diamonds said that it had increased the Kelvin-Faraday tonnage guidance to 13-16 million tonnes.

The company also announced that drilling at the Kelvin North Lobe has been suspended for the balance of the year due to limited air access by float plane. Drilling will resume in early 2016 once an ice runway has been constructed. In the meantime, drilling with one remaining rig at Faraday 2 is expected to continue until the end of November, it said.

Driling programmes also conffirmed the continuity of the Doyle kimberlite dyke on strike to the northeast and beyond the two kilometer strike previously defined, the company said. It added that while further targets remain to be tested, drilling at Doyle has been suspended for the balance of the year due to limited daylight.

Kennady Diamonds also said that seven batches of kimberlite core have been sent to laboratories for processing by caustic fusion. The diamond recovery results from these samples will be released over the balance of the year.