African Diamonds, the exploration company chaired by former academic, Mr John Teeling, today said its wholly-owned Botswana subsidiary, Kukama Mining and Exploration Limited, will begin further drilling next week in the search for the Orapa alluvial diamond deposit following surveys.
"The surveys were conducted along six lines varying in length between 2 and 3 kilometers across an area where the company expects to locate ancient palaeo-alluvial channels that drained the prolific diamond-rich Orapa kimberlite field, approximately 100km to the northwest," the company said.
"The results of the gravity surveys strongly suggest that the north-south extent of the projected channel system is at least 5.5 km and that there is more than one channel within the area investigated."
The company also said Kukama has completed a seventeen hole drilling programme on four of the 21 kimberlites on the Orapa licence.
All three kimberlites AK8, AK9 and BK10 are known, from earlier drilling, to contain diamonds, it said.