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Chapada Diamond Mine
The Chapada diamond mine and processing plant is in the
Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, 80km north-east of Cuiabá, a
major regional centre of over 700,000 people and the state
capital. The region has well-established infrastructure
including hydro-electric power, the source of electricity
supply to the project, and paved roads to within 28km of the
processing plant.
The existing Chapada diamond
recovery processing plant has been designed for low cost
expansion of production capacity in anticipation of
increasing the resource base. This will allow production
growth to be significantly fast-tracked upon the delineation
of further reserves.
 
Exploration Potential
The Chapada project comprises nine tenements covering a
combined surface area of 285km² (28,500 hectares). However,
the delineated resources (current mining area) are within
just two tenements (Quilombo and Peba Lagoinha) covering an
area of only 15km² (1,500 hectares).
A further seven
tenements comprising an additional 270km² are located within
50km radius of the processing plant. To date, no
substantial modern exploration work has been carried out on
these tenements, but their geological setting is almost
identical to that of the existing mine. This, together with
the lack of modern exploration work carried out on these
tenements, provides significant potential to grow the
resource base and expand production capacity through
successful exploration of these additional areas.
The
existing Chapada processing plant will provide a cost
efficient, effective and expeditious testing facility for
bulk samples taken from these exploration areas.
The
kimberlite source of the Chapada diamonds has not yet been
found but stone size distribution analysis, based on
diamonds recovered to-date, suggests the source of these
diamonds may be close to the Quilombo and Peba Lagoinha
tenements. Therefore substantial exploration upside exists
for discovery of the primary hard rock (kimberlite)
source(s) of the alluvial diamonds in the Chapada area.
Gem
quality diamonds have been recovered in the areas held by
Vaaldiam by local artisan miners for over 50 years.
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