The Project lies near the northeastern edge of the Phanerozoic Interior Platform, which extends from the Rocky Mountains in the west, to the Precambrian Canadian Shield in the northeast. The Interior Platform sediments exceed 600 m in thickness. The unmetamorphosed sedimentary rocks of the Interior Platform unconformably overlie metamorphosed basement rocks. These Proterozoic basement rocks have been interpreted to form part of the Glennie Domain which has been tectonically emplaced overlying the Archean Sask Craton. In the Star and Orion South area, the Precambrian is estimated to be at a depth of 730 m.

Based on surface and underground core drilling and underground mapping data, the Star and Orion South Kimberlite deposits contain two distinct types of kimberlite: 1) eruptive kimberlite phases; and, 2) kimberlitic sedimentary rocks.

The Star Kimberlite deposit is dominated by crater facies rocks, which include well-defined pyroclastic flows that radiate away from the crater. The sheet-like, inter-sedimentary Cantuar and Pense kimberlites are kimberlites deposited from pyroclastic flows from nearby kimberlite volcanoes. The EJF is a combination of vent filling pyroclastics and pyroclastic flows away from the crater. The MJF and LJF are crater facies vent filling pyroclastic kimberlite deposits.

The proposed Star and Orion South open pits will be conventional open pit mining operations.

Shore will operate and maintain the waste stripping IPCC system, and mine the kimberlite ore using its own equipment and labour force.

Shore purchased and commissioned a Bateman Engineering PTY Limited-designed process plant was commissioned in late January, 2004. The process plant consists of a 30 t/h crushing circuit, and a 10 t/h DMS circuit which utilizes a 250 mm diameter separating cyclone, and a recovery section consisting of a Flow Sort® X-Ray diamond sorting machine and grease tables. All kimberlite was stored in individual batch samples in a dedicated storage facility.

The +1.0 mm to -20 mm sized kimberlite material from the primary double deck vibrating classifying screen was pumped from the transfer pump box, dewatered and then stored into a 5 t capacity DMS surge bin for product separation into light and heavy mineral fractions. The material was then fed in a wet state to the DMS circuit by the combined vibrating pan feeder and DMS feed pump and dewatered once again. The kimberlite material was then mixed with a dense circulating medium consisting of ferrosilicon powder (FeSi) and water. Separation of the heavy and light particles (i.e. product) was achieved on the basis of the specific gravity (SG) of the minerals.

The +1.0 mm to -20 mm heavy mineral concentrate (DMS concentrate) that reported to the sinks screen was collected in 40 L stainless steel canisters. When the steel canister was full, the canister was locked, then transported and escorted to the recovery plant for particle sizing and diamond recovery by the plant Lead Hand and Shore security personnel (prior to January, 2007 this process was completed by Howe personnel and two Shore security personnel). The +1.0 mm to -6 mm light fraction product (‘coarse reject kimberlite’) was disposed outside of the process plant via conveyor belt. A front-end loader was used to transport the coarse reject kimberlite to a dedicated storage area and stockpiled on a per batch basis.

The DMS concentrate was separated into three particle size fractions (+1 to -3 mm, +3 to -6 mm and +6 to -20 mm respectively) by a vibrating classifying screen deck unit beneath the recovery plant hopper. During the sizing process, the respective size fractions were collected in individual 40 L stainless steel canisters located below the vibrating classifying screen deck. Once the particle sizing was completed, each sized canister was left to dewater as much as possible. The gross weight (wet) of each sized canister was weighed and recorded by recovery personnel and readied for diamond processing.

All of the wet DMS concentrate size fractions were processed separately via an x-ray sorter. All three individual sized fractions were manually fed to the x-ray sorter receiving hopper for processing, with only the +6 to –20 mm sized fraction processed twice through the x-ray unit. The x-ray sorter unit was designed on the principle of diamonds fluorescing / luminescing when bombarded by x-rays. The wet diamond bearing concentrates slide past photomultiplier tubes that detect fluorescent material (i.e. particles emitting light) which have been irradiated by x-rays. Excitation of the photomultiplier tubes triggers the ejector gate doors to open, forcing the diamond (and other fluorescent material plus surrounding gangue material) into a separate stainless steel canister. The x-ray tailings were collected in a 40 L steel canister to be reprocessed by the grease table.

A two-stepped (1 m wide) grease table was employed to concentrate the +3 to -6 mm and +1 to -3 mm x-ray tailings. The +6 mm to -20 mm size fraction was not processed through the grease table, but processed twice through the x-ray sorter. Most diamonds are hydrophobic (i.e. non-wettable) and thus will adhere to grease specially formulated for diamond recovery. The diamonds adhere to the grease on first contact and the flow of concentrate over the adhering diamonds causes them to be pushed further into the grease.