Canadian firm Lucara Diamonds has announced the recovery of a 1,758 carat diamond from its Karowe Diamond Mine located in Botswana.
One of the largest diamonds in recorded history, the largest diamond recovered in Botswana, and the largest diamond to be mined at Karowe to date, the unbroken 1,758 carat stone was recovered through Lucara’s state of the art XRT circuit, commissioned in April 2015.
Weighing close to 352 grams and measuring 83mm x 62mm x 46mm, the diamond has been characterized as near gem of variable quality, including domains of high-quality white gem.
Eira Thomas, Lucara’s CEO commented: “Lucara’s technologically advanced, XRT diamond recovery circuit has once again delivered historic results. Karowe has now produced two diamonds greater than 1,000 carats in just four years, affirming the coarse nature of the resource and the likelihood of recovering additional, large, high quality diamonds in the future, particularly as we mine deeper in the orebody and gain access to the geologically favourable EM/PK(S) unit, the source of both of our record breaking, +1,000 carat diamonds.”
Lucara Diamond’s 100 percent owned Karowe diamond mine, located in Botswana, has been in production since 2012 and is one of world’s foremost producers of large, high quality, Type IIA diamonds in excess of 10.8 carats, including the historic 1,109 carat Lesedi La Rona (second largest gem diamond ever recovered) and the 813 carat Constellation (sold for a record US$63.1 million). Lucara sells its diamond production through regularly scheduled tenders throughout the year and since commencing production, has sold 180 diamonds for more than $1 million each and 10 single diamonds for more than $10 million each.
