Botswana Diamonds begins drilling at Thorny River

Botswana Diamonds announced on Wednesday that drilling has begun on its Thorny River project in South Africa.

The AIM-traded firm said a total of eight reverse circulation (RC) holes were planned in between the recently-discovered River and River Extension blows, with the drilling programme expected to take no more than two weeks.

It discovered the River Blow in November 2020, which covered a modelled surface area of 80 meters by 40 metres.

The River Extension blow, which is less than 100 metres east of the River Blow, was discovered by the company in April of this year.

Select drill samples from both campaigns were treated at an independent laboratory, where “abundant” kimberlitic indicators were recovered, along with 11 diamonds.

For context, the firm said the discoveries at Thorny River were within the Zebediela kimberlite field, which primarily consists of a series of “consistently diamondiferous” kimberlite dykes, with a strike length of 20 kilometres.

On that dyke, there are a number of blows including Kudu, Sugarbird and Sugarbird Pass, all part of the Klipspringer diamond mine, as well as Marsfontein.

Those four blows had been mined-out, with the latter being mined by a De Beers-SouthernEra joint venture with a payback of three-and-a-half days.

Marsfontein is 3.5 kilometres west, and on strike, from the company's discoveries.

Botswana said the objective of the exploration programme in the Thorny River project area was to discover additional blows, with the objective of the new drilling programme to determine the extent of the connection between the two recently-discovered blows.

“This is an important step in our drive to establish a commercial diamond ore body at Thorny River,” said chairman John Teeling.

“We are very hopeful that these eight holes will confirm that the two blows, River and River extension, are in fact one orebody.”

At 1005 BST, shares in Botswana Diamonds were down 1.21% at 1.06p.