Hello Tomato
Firstly, my appologies to lurkers as this is off subject. Skip by if you are not interested.
VD in core do not equate to profitability. Brazil often produces VD in core but the stones are rarely of good quality or colour, and tend to be marginally better than industrial diamonds. They do get gem quality diamonds as well, some very good ones, but there are alot fewer of them.
Total speculation mind you, but I personally expect that diamonds on the WSP NWT claims, despite being visible in the core, will probably be modest to good grade (numbers/tonne) but of poor quality. This, based on the fact that they are probably coming from deep within a root zone, and close to MPV which has a similar, if not less erroded root zone depth. MPV has reasonably good grade but poor quality stones. While preliminary, this is the early indication of the kimberlite trend in this area.
Keep in mind that even Aber has modest quality stones at $64/carat but their grade makes their ore of outstanding value. Even if WSP had $20/carat stones, if their grade averaged 3.75 carats/tonne, they might be able to make a go of it if there was 4 to 6 million tonnes of recoverable ore. Regardless, throughput would not be the high volume achievable from an open pit operation, therefore, significant shareholder profits would be unlikely.
I tried as subtly as possible to make this point on the WSP thread in April but nobody wanted to hear it.
Regards |
