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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Tuesday was an upbeat 91-77-142 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose nine points to 575. Dermot Desmond and Mark Wall's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPVD) rose one cent to 17.5 cents on 68,000 shares. The upward nudge followed word after the close Monday that the company had a mediocre quarter recovering diamonds at its 49-per-cent-owned Gahcho Kue mine in the Northwest Territories -- and an even rougher three months of selling them.

Mountain Province's stock clung tenaciously to the 25-cent mark through the quarter, but a sense of foreboding that tough news was on its way hit the market in April, as the company's stock sagged steadily to just 15.5 cents late last week. Still, there are glimmers of encouragement in the news, as the predicted off-year for production at Gahcho Kue has yet to kick in.

And so, Mountain Province and De Beers Canada mined nearly two million tonnes of kimberlite during the quarter but processed just under 806,000 tonnes of the rock -- a modest improvement over the first quarter in 2023. The grade was off, however, as the mine averaged just 1.57 carats per tonne, compared with 1.72 carats per tonne a year ago, and grades as high as 2.3 carats per tonne when the mine was digging into its high-grade pipes early on.

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