Lucara completes P440m diamond tender
| Monday April 14, 2014 15:05
The TSX- and Gaborone-listed miner said it had sold 20 diamonds in single lots totalling 1,191 carat, which resulted in an average price per carat of $42,347.
Of the 20 diamonds on offer, 15 sold for more than a million dollars each, including eight that sold for more than $2-million each.
The Vancouver-based firm also reported that it held two regular diamond tenders in the first quarter, selling a total of 107,500 carat for combined revenues of $33.6-million.
This, together with the exceptional stone tender, brought the total year-to-date revenues to $84.06-million – equal to $782/ct.
“Strong regular tenders combined with the outstanding results from the exceptional stone tender continue to demonstrate the quality of the Karowe mine and firmly establishes Karowe as one of the world’s leading diamond producers by value, further reinforcing the updated resource statement issued in December,” president and CEO William Lamb said.
The company’s next exceptional stone tender was scheduled for the third quarter.
Lucara said that the Karowe mine had already this year produced a number of high-value diamonds, including a 153.5 ct gem quality stone, which it was considering for this tender.
According to the December resource update, the Karowe mine has a Canadian National Instrument 43-101-compliant indicated resource estimated at a 1.25 mm bottom cutoff size of 46.2-million tonnes, with an average grade of 16 carats per hundred tonnes (cpht). The mine has an average modelled diamond value of $394/ct.
The deposit also has a recoverable inferred mineral resource of about 21-million tonnes at an average grade of 14 cpht, with an average modelled diamond value of $412/ct.
The resource update had found that the significant numbers of large and high-value diamonds recovered from the centre and south lobes of the mineral resource had resulted in a positive change to the modelled and recovered size frequency distribution, which significantly increased the overall modelled average price per carat for the Karowe mine, compared to the previous mineral resource estimate.