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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Monday was a middling 54-52-161. The TSX Venture Exchange fell one point to 671 while polished diamond prices crept upward. Nicholas Houghton's True North Gems Inc. (TGX) gained 1.5 cents to 15.5 cents on 903,000 shares. True North is building a modest ruby and sapphire mine at Aappaluttoq, on western Greenland. It is doing so without heavily diluting its stock, in part because its mine should cost just $40-million to build. Negar Adam's Makena Resources Inc. (MKN) closed unchanged at 4.5 cents on 1.33 million shares. Makena has several projects needing work including the alumina and rare earth project near Murdochville on Gaspe peninsula. Ms. Adams wrote down the value of Murdochville last year but she still hopes to raise exploration cash for the project.

Robert Gannicott's Dominion Diamond Corp. (DDC), down 32 cents to $19.54 on 522,000 shares, had a banner year at Diavik in the Northwest Territories. The mine yielded 7.02 million carats during 2014, not counting 220,000 carats recovered from coarse ore rejects. The mine began the year expecting to recover 6.1 million carats from freshly mined kimberlite. Diavik, which is now mining entirely from underground, produced 3.2 million carats from the A-418 pipe and 1.9 million carats each from A-154 North and A-154 South. Although it produced fewer carats than A-418, the A-154 North diamonds were worth the most, about $360-million (U.S.), compared with $330-million for the A-418 gems. All told, Diavik's 2014 production was worth just under $1-billion (U.S.), putting Dominion's share at nearly $400-million (U.S.).

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