U2 and Victor Mine
Chuck has said U2 = Victor Mine, low grade but high value and similar tonnage. Fyi, De Beers previously owned 50% of the Botswana mine that was later sold to Lukas Lundin's Lucara Diamond (LUC) which was in the news last week for discovering a 1,110 carats stone.
De Beers' Victor Mine has been producing in excess of $300 million worth of diamonds every year since startup in 2006. It is the diamond mine that is producing the highest carat value in the world.
See Link:
https://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2014-11/nov17_14db.html "...
The Victor Lake mine in northern Ontario returned an average grade of 0.22 carats per tonne for 0.7 million total carats in 2013.
But diamond valuations for those 700,000 carats were a little more than three times higher than at Snap Lake.
Victor Lake diamonds were valued at $560 per carat in 2013, meaning the total value of Victor Lake production was $392 million, compared to $241.8 million out of Snap Lake."
De Beers appears to be running out of options and in desperate need to find another orebody to feed its $1 billion plant in Attawapiskat. Otherwise, the plant would soon become a pile of scrap metals in mid 2018 when it will be forced to close. The nearby Victor Tango extension pipe appears smaller & lower grade and has yet to receive Govt. permitting and FN agreement for a bulk sample. Acquiring or joint venturing with MTX makes sense & will solve the end-of-mine issue for Victor Mine.
According to MTX, for the bulk sample, drilling equipment capable of drilling 50 holes (60 centimetre diameter) to a depth of 360 metres as well as plant equipment capable of extracting an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 carats of diamonds would be transported along a 60 kilometer extension of the winter road supplying DeBeers'
Victor Diamond Mine.
It is time to make a deal.