North Arrow Minerals Inc. said Oct. 16 that it discovered diamonds at its early stage Mel diamond project on the Melville Peninsula in Nunavut, Canada, dubbing the new discovery the ML-8 kimberlite.

The company identified diamondiferous kimberlite float, including pieces measuring up to half a meter, over an area of 100 meters within and to the north of a small lake near the up-ice termination of a well-defined kimberlite indicator mineral train.

North Arrow said a 62.1-kilogram sample of the discovery returned 23 diamonds larger than the 0.106-millimeter sieve size, including a single, colorless diamond bigger than the 0.85-mm sieve size.

The company also noted that the ML-8 kimberlite discovery is coincident with an identified geophysical anomaly that spans the northern shoreline of the 200-meter by 400-meter lake.

"The presence of two diamonds greater than 0.6 mm in this small sample is highly encouraging and these initial microdiamond counts compare favorably with results from the diamondiferous Aviat and Naujaat kimberlite fields, located 240 kilometers to the north and 210 km to the southwest of Mel, respectively," North Arrow President and CEO Ken Armstrong said.

The company plans to undertake delineation and exploration drilling at the ML-8 discovery and other targets in 2018.