Venus Metals buys diamond polisher
THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Diversified resources play Venus Metals Corporation has purchased a containerised, modular diamond processing plant for its Argyle Smoke Creek alluvial diamond project.
Smoke Creek is located downstream of the nearby Argyle Diamond Mine in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
The project contains a JORC compliant Inferred Resource estimated at 17.9 million tonnes at an average grade of 28 carats per hundred tonnes for 5,000,000 carats using a cut‐off of 10CPHT.
Alluvial diamonds were first discovered at Smoke Creek 1979, which subsequently led to the discovery of the world-class Argyle diamond deposit.
“The Venus Smoke Creek Alluvial diamond Project contains the same diamondiferous gravels to those already mined by Argyle at upper Smoke Creek,” Venus Metals said in an announcement.
“Venus’ Argyle Smoke Creek Alluvial Diamond Deposit potentially provides a new source of genuine, Kimberley Process compliant, issue‐free Australian diamonds including the rare pinks.”
Venus geologists have selected over 40 primary target pits for excavation during the 2011 dry‐season in the Kimberley region.
The gravels excavated will be hauled to a set‐down area before being presented to the process plant.
The recently purchased processing plant comprises three modules incorporating a Scrubbing & Screening module, a 10 tonne‐per‐hour Dense Medium Separation (DMS) module and a dual‐X‐Ray diamond recovery module.
Each module in the plant produces potentially diamond‐bearing material or waste material not containing diamond.
Module 1 cleans the gravels and separates the very large or very small sizes not required. Material in the required size range is passed to Module 2 for further processing. Waste material is returned to the pits.
Module 2 is the DMS which utilises a proven heavy medium process to achieve controlled densimetric separation based on the differing densities of diamond and its accompanying gravels. Material selected in this process is passed to Module 3 for further processing. Waste is pumped to a drying pond pending return to the pits.
Module 3 contains two X‐Ray sorters developed and produced in South Africa by Flow Sort. Their operation is based on the X‐ray induced luminescence of diamonds, which enables the machine to separate diamond from non‐diamond rapidly. Module 3 operates within a high‐security locked container.
Although recently purchased the plant is not brand new having been constructed in South Africa in 2008 for an alluvial diamond project, which did not proceed. The plant has been in in storage since then.
It is currently in transit from South Africa and is scheduled to hit the dock in Fremantle early‐June, from where it will make its way up to the Smoke Creek camp with a bulk sampling program scheduled to commence at the end of June.