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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Tuesday was a slow 50-40-171. The TSX Venture Exchange gained six points to 997 while diamond prices fell 0.2 per cent. Laura Lee Duffett's Tres-Or Resources Ltd. (TRS) closed unchanged at 1.5 cents on 362,000 shares. The company still pays lip service to exploring its big Guigues kimberlite, east of Lac Temiscamingue in Quebec, but it has done little since the recession. Thomas Hodgson and John Kanellitsas's Lithium Americas Corp. (LAC) lost one-half cents to 26 cents on 959,000 shares. The company hopes to develop Cauchari-Olaroz, the "third-largest lithium brine deposit in the world" in northern Argentina.

Robert Gannicott's Dominion Diamond Corp. (DDC) gained one cent to $15.01 on 259,000 shares on word its diamond sales sparkled in its second quarter. The company's Ekati mine produced 802,000 carats from 1.06 million tonnes of kimberlite during the period, while Diavik managed 2.17 million carats from 620,000 tonnes of kimberlite. (Dominion holds a 90-per-cent interest in Ekati and a 40-per-cent share of Diavik.) At Diavik, Mr. Gannicott said production was 20 per cent higher than planned because of higher production from the three producing pipes and improved availability of equipment. Another, unmentioned factor was a markedly higher grade at A-418, which averaged an impressive 4.36 carats per tonne. The pipe produced diamonds at a rate of just 2.7 carats per tonne a year ago. Several years ago when Diavik's open pits were nearing the end, analysts pooh-poohed the idea that the mine could maintain its mining rate of 2.3 million tonnes per year as a solely underground operation. They were wrong. Through its last two quarters, Diavik is processing kimberlite at a rate of 2.4 million tonnes per year. As a result, Diavik's production forecast of 6.1 million carats this year is in dire need of an update. The mine has produced 4.01 million carats through the past two quarters, an annual rate of eight million carats per year. At Ekati, Mr. Gannicott said production was also "substantially ahead of plan" as a result of higher grades and operational improvements to the processing plant. Ekati produced 1.36 million carats in the past two quarters, an annualized rate of 2.75 million carats from four million tonnes of kimberlite. The original target was just 900,000 carats from 2.6 million tonnes of kimberlite. The higher production has boosted Dominion's revenues substantially. The company has sold $452-million (U.S.) worth of diamonds in the last six months, up from $370-million (U.S.) last year.

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