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. Separa ........