Ashton Mining Cda Up 29% On Quebec Diamond Proj Results
VANCOUVER (Dow Jones)--Ashton Mining of Canada (ACA.T) shares are up 29% after the company released partial results from a 2004 bulk-sample program on its Foxtrot diamond project in north-central Quebec. In Toronto Thursday, Ashton is up 28 Canadian cents to C$1.23 on about 664,000 shares. After the markets closed Wednesday, Ashton reported "encouraging diamond results" from 146 metric tons of material collected from the Renard 3 kimberlitic body at the joint-venture Foxtrot property. The results are "extremely positive," Meghan Lewis, a mining analyst at Dundee Securities, said in a note Thursday. So far, there has been a high level of variability among diamond counts from various samples taken from the Renard diamond-bearing bodies on the Foxtrot project, she said. With more sample material yet to process, Lewis said she anticipates that the average grade of the 2004 bulk sample will be high enough - above 0.5 carats per ton - to allow Ashton to move on to the next exploration stage. Lewis or an associate owns Ashton shares, and her firm has an investment-banking relationship with the company. Ashton said the latest sample from the Renard 3 body returned 184 carats of diamonds, giving the material an estimated diamond content of 126 carats per hundred tons, or 1.26 carats per ton. Ten diamonds recovered from the latest sample weighed more than one carat, the company said, including one 4.3-carat clear diamond, the largest recovered so far from the Renard cluster. The company also said the diamond content of the samples reported to date may not be representative of the overall diamond content of the Renard 3 body, due to several factors including location of drill holes and the relatively small size of the samples. The 146-ton sample is part of a 635-ton bulk sample collected from various Renard diamond-bearing bodies last year by Ashton and its partner, Soquem Inc. To date, the 415 tons of bulk-sample material recovered has returned 282 carats of diamonds, including 12 diamonds weighing more than one carat, the company said. Results from the final 220 tons of material are expected in the next two months. The company will then do valuation work to obtain a preliminary determination of diamond value for the Renard cluster. Dundee's Lewis said the latest results from Renard 3 push the grade of the cumulative bulk sample to about 0.68 carats per ton. The consistently coarse stone size distribution bodes "very well" for the Foxtrot project, she said. Ashton, Vancouver, is a diamond-exploration company. Soquem is a subsidiary of the Quebec government agency Societe generale de financement du Quebec. |
