peregrine 2nd batch

It's been an active week for news on the Canadian diamond exploration landscape, with North Arrow Minerals' Pikoo news yesterday and a Peregrine Diamonds update out this morning.

Peregrine completed its summer program on the 100%-owned Chidliak project in Nunavut three weeks early and has transported the CH-7 bulk sample from Iqaluit to Saskatoon for processing. Dense Media Separation of the 558.5 wet tonne sample will begin on Sept. 14 and will provide diamond grades for different zones of CH-7 as well as representative diamond parcels for independent valuation.

There should be plenty of news flow in the first quarter of 2016 for the Eric Friedland-helmed company. Final diamond recovery is expected in early January, with initial diamond grades shortly thereafter. Diamond valuation results are also expected in the first quarter, according to the company.

Peregrine completed 1,361 metres of core drilling in its summer program, designed to prove up the resource at the CH-6 and CH-7 kimberlites ahead of a planned Phase 1 preliminary economic assessment expected to land in the second quarter.

The company has discovered a total of 71 kimberlites at Chidliak, eight of them potentially economic, and delineated an inferred resource of 8.57 million carats at average grades of 2.58 carats per tonne in CH-6. A 1,013-carat parcel of diamonds from CH-6 had solid modelled prices ranging from US$162 per carat to US$236 per carat.

Peregrine has 277 million shares outstanding and the stock last traded at 19.5 cents, for a market cap of $54 million. The stock has come off since trading in the high .30s in April, and has a 52-week range of .14 to .38.

News release: Peregrine provides Chidliak update