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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a poor 50-68-139. The TSX Venture Exchange rose eight points to 758 while polished diamond prices were flat. Chris Taylor's Dunnedin Ventures Inc. (DVI) lost two cents to 28 cents on 491,000 shares. There is no recent news from the company's Kahuna diamond project near Rankin Inlet.

Dean Taylor's Diamcor Mining Inc. (DMI), up one cent to 82 cents on 6,000 shares, is pleased with the performance of its upgraded processing facility at the Krone-Endora at Venetia alluvial diamond deposit in South Africa. Mr. Taylor, president and chief executive officer, says that Diamcor sold just 8,318.8 carats during its second quarter, 38 per cent less than the 13,384.7 carats it sold a year ago. The decline was the result of delays and shutdowns associated with the testing, commissioning and calibrating required at the new facility.

Nevertheless, Diamcor's revenue was essentially unchanged, at just under $1.9-million (U.S.) for the quarter, because the company averaged a pleasing $222.52 (U.S.) per carat in its latest quarter, compared with $142.40 (U.S.) per carat in the same period last year. Mr. Taylor suggests that the higher diamond value in the latest quarter is because Diamcor now processes all the material smaller than a 45-millimetre cut-off, compared with an upper limit of just 26 millimetres a year ago. (The lower limit, one-millimetre, is unchanged.) The revenue for the second quarter includes diamonds recovered until late in May, but it does not include the 5.42-carat green gem that the company recovered late in May.

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