Star Diamond Corporation, through a joint venture arrangement with Rio Tinto Exploration Canada, holds a 25% participating interest in certain mineral dispositions located in the Fort à la Corne diamond district of central Saskatchewan, Canada (including the Star-Orion South Diamond Project). Rio Tinto Exploration Canada (“RTEC”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto, holds the remaining 75% interest (See News Release dated December 9, 2021). Rio Tinto refers to their Fort à la Corne mineral properties as “Project FalCon”.
These mineral dispositions are located in the Fort à la Corne provincial forest of central Saskatchewan, situated some 60 kilometres east of the city of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada. The Fort à la Corne provincial forest is an island forest, surrounded by agricultural land and urban development. Access to the Fort à la Corne area is provided by paved highways, a grid gravel road system and an extensive network of forestry roads, passable by four-wheel drive and high clearance two-wheel drive vehicles all year round. The vast extent of, and massive kimberlite volumes contained in, the Fort à la Corne Field has been noted since the original discovery of these kimberlites in the late nineteen eighties.
In the past Star Diamond and other companies have completed extensive exploration on these Fort à la Corne kimberlites, including geophysical surveys, pattern core drilling, large diameter drilling and micro- and macrodiamond analyses, which resulted in the documentation of geological models for a number of these bodies.
Geological models have been prepared by Star Diamond for five partially evaluated Fort à la Corne kimberlites as well as the Star and Orion South Kimberlites (see Star Diamond Corporation News Release dated March 6, 2014).
During 2019, Rio Tinto Exploration Canada (“RTEC”) completed a ten-hole bulk sample program on the Star Kimberlite using a Trench Cutter Sampling Rig.
Other recent exploration programs by RTEC have been performed to investigate kimberlites in the Fort à la Corne diamond district other than the Star and Orion South kimberlites, to assess and prioritise these other kimberlites for future exploration and evaluation work (see Star Diamond Corp. News Release dated October 25, 2018). RTEC has used various exploration methods, in addition to in-house exploration methods, to reinvestigate the other Fort à la Corne kimberlites to assess and prioritise them for future exploration and evaluation work. During 2018, approximately 5,350 line kilometres of magnetic field data and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging or Laser Altimeter Survey) data was collected by RTEC, concurrent with their airborne gravity gradiometry (“AGG”) survey data, to produce a complete set of gravity field, magnetic field and topographic data over the surveyed area.