By Rob Delaney

April 25 (Bloomberg) -- Noront Resources Ltd., the mineral explorer that's risen sevenfold in the past year, fell in Toronto trading after it said sample results for its Double Eagle deposit were delayed because laboratory tests may have been faulty.

Noront fell 37 cents, or 8.4 percent, to C$3.88 at 12:33 p.m. on Toronto's TSX Venture Exchange. A close at that price would be the biggest decline since Jan. 21. Earlier, the shares fell as much as 18 percent.

Toronto-based Noront said today in a statement that results from core samples sent to SGS Mineral Services Laboratory weren't ``acceptable in terms of quality assurance and quality control.''

Discrepancies between Noront's control samples and results from SGS led to an investigation that found problems with calibration of SGS's equipment, Noront's President Richard Nemis said in a telephone interview.

Noront released drilling results from the northern Ontario deposit on Oct. 30 that showed average copper concentrations of 3.87 percent and nickel concentrations of 4.82 percent in ore sampled. Nemis said in a Nov. 2 interview that Noront would announce minimum copper and nickel reserves in the deposit by the end of 2007.

The delay in assay results doesn't mean previous estimates were wrong, Nemis said.

``We're not sitting on information, we just don't have the information'' because tests SGS has run since January must be redone, Nemis said.