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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Monday was a 72-72-168 draw as the TSX Venture Exchange rose two points to 786. Dermot Desmond and Mark Wall's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPVD) lost one-half cent to 5.5 cents on 110,000 shares. The company rolled out its predictably gloomy second quarter production report for its 49-per-cent-owned Gahcho Kue mine in the Northwest Territories but offers a time-worn hint of hope that it is turning the corner.

Gahcho Kue produced 708,072 carats from just under 884,000 tonnes of kimberlite during the spring quarter -- an annualized rate of 2.83 million carats from 3.54 million tonnes. The production is a far cry from the heady days in the late 2010s when the mine managed seven million carats from nearly 3.2 million tonnes of kimberlite. Grade is the issue of course, as in the glory year of 2018, Gahcho Kue averaged 217 carats per hundred tonnes, but in the latest quarter it achieved just 80 carats per hundred tonnes.

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