Lucapa Diamond has recovered a 208 carat diamond at its prolific Lulo mine in Angola, the third largest ever found at the operation.
The company said the high quality, type IIa diamond was unearthed at the lizeria, or terrace area, of its Mining Block 31 portion of Lulo, known for delivering high value stones.
The diamond is also the second 100 carat plus stone Lucapa retrieved in October, following the recovery of a 123 carat, type IIa rough at the start of the month.
The mine, which hosts the world’s highest dollar per carat alluvial diamonds, began commercial production in January 2015. Only a year later, it delivered the largest ever diamond recovered in Angola a 404 carat white stone later named the “4th February Stone”.
Lucapa finds Lulo mine’s third largest diamond It is the second 100 carat plus diamond found at Lulo in October. The operation has delivered 39 diamonds weighing more than 100 carats each to date.
Lucapa has a 40% stake in the Lulo mine. The rest is held by Angola’s national diamond company (Endiama) and Rosas & Petalas, a private entity.
Angola is the world’s fifth diamond producer by value and sixth by volume. Its industry, which began a century ago under Portuguese colonial rule, is successfully being liberalized.
Lucapa Diamond Company has recovered one of the largest pink diamonds in history: a 170-carat stone from the Lulo mine in Angola.
The type IIa rough, named the Lulo Rose, is “believed to be the largest pink diamond recovered in the last 300 years,” Lucapa said Wednesday. It is also the fifth-largest diamond from Lulo, and the deposit’s 27th over 100 carats since commercial production began in 2015. Lucapa plans to sell the diamond through an international tender conducted by Angolan state diamond-marketing company Sodiam, it noted.
“The record-breaking Lulo diamond field has again delivered a precious and large gemstone, this time an extremely rare and beautiful pink diamond,” said José Manuel Ganga Júnior, chairman of the board of state-owned Endiama, one of Lucapa’s partners in the deposit. “It is a significant day for the Angolan diamond industry.”
In addition to the pink, Lulo is also the source of Angola’s largest diamond, a 404-carat rough named the 4th February Stone.
Lucapa has begun bulk sampling at “priority kimberlites” as it searches for the primary source of Lulo’s diamonds, managing director Stephen Wetherall added.
De Beers is to start diamond exploration in Angola later this year after signing two mineral investment contracts with the Angolan government but the secretive group is giving little away on the details of the agreements.
De Beers announced today that the two licences covering prospects in the north-east of the country are for the “award and exercise of mineral rights covering all stages of diamond resource development from exploration to mining and span a period of 35 years.”
But the group does not specify its shareholding in the new developments which are joint ventures with Endiama – the Angolan government’s state-owned diamond company.
In a statement De Beers said only that “De Beers Group will hold a substantial majority in the new companies, with Endiama having the ability to incrementally increase its equity share over time in line with certain conditions outlined in the shareholder agreements, albeit with De Beers Group maintaining a substantial majority.”
By contrast, when Rio Tinto announced it was returning to Angola in October last year it specified that it would hold a 75% stake in the first phase of any mine developed with Endiama holding 25% but that the contract left open the possibility of Endiama increasing its holding to 49%.
De Beers’ return to Angola represents a breakthrough for the country following the regulatory and policy changes made by the government of President Joao Lourenco who replaced former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos in 2017.
Angola is arguably the most prospective country in the world in which to look for a major new diamond deposit but De Beers and most other diamond explorers left the country in the early 2000’s.
That was because of the repressive business conditions imposed by Dos Santos. These included a ban on any foreign company owning a majority interest in the diamond projects it was developing.
De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver commented that, “Angola has worked hard in recent years to create a stable and attractive investment environment and we are pleased to be returning to active exploration in the country.
“Angola remains highly prospective and we look forward to being part of this next stage in the development of Angola’s diamond sector.”
Lucapa Diamond Company and its partners Endiama and Rosas & Petalas have announced the recovery of three +100 carat diamonds by Sociedade Mineira Do Lulo from the Lulo alluvial diamond mine in Angola.
The 131-carat is a Type IIa D-colour diamond, the 118-carat is a brown diamond and the 133-carat stone is a lower-quality grey diamond.
Six +100 carat diamonds have been recovered from Mining Block 46 (MB46) in the last three months, reaffirming its recent elevation to the Lulo mining block with the best +100 carat diamond occurrence rate – one +100 carat diamond for every ~20,000 bcm’s of gravel.
The Canguige catchment and adjacent priority kimberlites are already the focus of the Project Lulo JV kimberlite exploration program, and the frequent recovery of large high-value diamonds underpins the prospectivity of this area.
Dundo, Angola. Two diamonds, one 131-carat and the other 133-carat, were found in Angola’s Lulo mine in eastern Lunda Norte province, national diamond company Endiama announced here Friday.
The white colored gems were found in block 46 and 21 with more than 100 carats discovered in that mine, according to a note from Endiama.
Since the beginning of its exploration in 2010, the Lulo mine is known for its rare and high quality diamonds.
The mine’s blocks 6 and 8 are responsible for the production of 13 of the 15 stones with over 100 carats from Lulo mine, including the largest diamond ever found in Angola in 2016, with 404.2 carats.
The Lulo project, with a concession area of 3,000 square km, is operated within the scope of a partnership in which Endiama holds 32 percent, Lucapa Diamond Company Limited 40 percent, and the operator Rosas & Petalas 28 percent.
Lucapa Diamond Company has pocketed a neat $9 million from the latest diamond sales from its Lulo alluvial mine in Angola.
The diamonds were sold through Lucapa’s partners, Empresa Nacional de Diamantes and Rosas & Petalas, for an average US$1550 per carat.
With 4269 carats sold, this brings the total proceeds from the sale to US$6.6 million.
Importantly, this sale price is higher than the year-to-date average of US$1371 per carat.
So far, Lucapa has sold just under 20,400 diamond carats over the 2020 calendar year for US$28 million.
Angola and Lesotho diamond exploration Lucapa produces diamonds from both the Lulo mine in Angola and the Mothae kimberlite mine in Lesotho a small kingdom completely landlocked by South Africa.
The company faced some turmoil earlier this year when COVID-19 restrictions in Angola and South Africa dealt a blow to Lucapa’s operations.
Nevertheless, operations were back up and running at both mines soon after the end of the September quarter.
So far, Lucapa’s Lulo mine has produced 15 100 carat plus diamonds making it one of the highest dollar-per-carat alluvial diamond producers in the world.
At Mothae, Lucapa has produced over 30,000 carats of diamonds in just one year of production, with three diamonds at over 100 carats each.
Luanda, Mar 4 (Prensa Latina) Popular claims in southern Angola warned of the illegal extraction of diamonds and other natural resources in localities of Cuando Cubango, local press reported on Wednesday. According to the Jornal de Angola daily, the warnings came from the municipality of Mavinga, where the population observed a group of foreigners in clandestine mining activities.
Cited by the newspaper, the province’s governor Julio Bessa said he knew the claims of the population and promised that personnel from the Ministries of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, and Interior will carry out the relevant investigations to adopt measures.
From the Caiundo commune, 135 kilometers from the city of Menongue, reports also arrived on the extraction of various mineral resources, including mercury, confirmed the governor, who assured he was not in doubts about the complaints’ veracity.
As he acknowledged, another similar concern is the uncontrolled exploitation of forest resources in the province, rich in biodiversity, wood, diamonds, copper, gold, bronze, quartz and iron.
The aforementioned irregularities are a concern of the national authorities, which launched Operation Transparency in September 2018, focused primarily on preventing and punishing crimes related to diamond trafficking and immigration.
As a result of the plan, in September 2019 the executive reported on the seizure of about 35,000 carats in one year.
Revenue from Angola’s national diamond-trading company, Sodiam, rose 6% in 2019 as the company sold a higher volume of rough goods.
Proceeds for the year came to $1.3 billion from the sale of 9 million carats of rough diamonds, compared with 8.4 million carats in 2018, the government said in a Facebook post last week. That offset a 10% drop in the average price to $137 per carat for the year.
The increase came despite weakness in the rough-diamond market in 2019, with many miners, including De Beers and Alrosa, reporting a decrease in sales.
Angola implemented a new, more competitive diamond-trading policy that allows miners to offer 60% of their production to clients of their choice rather than selling through the state trading company.
In the fourth quarter, Sodiam sold 3 million carats of rough for $409 million, at an average price of $136 per carat.
