Lucapa sells $23m-worth of gems
Lucapa Diamonds earns $23.1 million from the sale of rough diamonds from the Lulo Diamond Project in Angola in the first quarter of 2016.
|||Gaborone - Australian gem miner Lucapa Diamonds says it has earned $23.1 million from the sale of rough diamonds from the Lulo Diamond Project in Angola in the first quarter of 2016.
In a statement released on April 13, Lucapa Diamonds CEO Stephen Wetherell said the stones were sold for an average of $11 983 per carat.
The sale figures included the 404-carat Type IIa diamond which was sold for $16 million in February.
Wetherell said the company earned $38.1 million in gross revenue from the sale of alluvial diamonds recovered from the ongoing trial mining and exploration operations along the Lulo River in south-central Angola.
He added production at the Lulo Project had risen 131 percent during the first quarter of 2016 and yielded 3 088 carats due to a change in targeting priorities. “Instead of pursuing higher volumes from lower-value alluvial mining areas, Lucapa and its partners switched focus to trial mining of higher-value areas which could be accessible during the Angolan wet season.
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This strategy resulted in the successful identification of two new areas at Lulo producing large valuable diamonds.
On April 12, the company announced the recovery of more large special white and pink-coloured diamonds from the ongoing trial mining in the E46 alluvial terrace of the Lulo alluvial mining project.
“The latest discoveries include a 59 carat Type I diamond and a 33 carat Type IIa D-colour gem. In addition, Lucapa and its partners have recovered a number of pink diamonds from E46, including an intense-fancy 0.2 carat.
“These pink recoveries,together with the 4 carat pink recovered in the original exploration bulk sampling program, suggest the E46 diamond population should include fancy-coloured diamonds as well as large, high-quality gems,” Wetherell added.
AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY