from Will P stockwatch tonight Eric Friedland and Tom Peregoodoff's Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. (PGD) closed unchanged at 17 cents on 50,000 shares. The company should have promotable news through the long and quiet Arctic winter thanks to a delayed start to the processing of the company's mini-bulk test of CH-7, a key pipe at its Chidliak project on Baffin Island. Mr. Peregoodoff, CEO, says the 558 tonnes of wet kimberlite should be reduced to a concentrate by mid-November and the diamonds should be liberated by early December. That suggests shareholders will be in line for a Christmas present -- hopefully not a lump of coal -- as Peregrine promises the grade "shortly thereafter." The current best guess for CH-7, based on a 47-tonne surface test in 2010, is a grade of one carat per tonne.
From there, Mr. Peregoodoff and Mr. Friedland, chairman, promise a diamond valuation for CH-7 "early in the first quarter of 2016." There is no earlier data upon which to hang a guess, other than the initial valuation for a nearby pipe, CH-6, where a 1,013-carat parcel yielded a valuation of $213 (U.S.) per carat in 2014. While diamond values are frequently similar across nearby pipes, there are enough glaring exceptions to render the assumption foolhardy at best. Nevertheless there is an encouraging sign: the diamond counts from CH-6 and CH-7 suggest the two bodies have similar size distribution profiles. Assuming the grade and values imply an economic result, Peregrine will quickly produce a resource estimate for CH-7 so the several hundred tonnes of kimberlite can be included in the preliminary economic assessment that the company plans for the spring of 2016.