The Diamond Certification Laboratory of Australia (DCLA)
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To celebrate its one year anniversary, this morning Sotheby’s Diamonds revealed its most exceptional gem to date: a 102.34 carat, D Flawless, Type IIA round brilliant diamond, which the auction house describes as “the rarest and most valuable white diamond ever to come to market”.
The diamond was cut from a 425-carat rough mined by the De Beers group in Botswana. The cutting process took over six months and required the diamond to be transported between Johannesburg and New York.
De Beers will begin auctioning rough diamonds from other mining companies to provide a broader range of goods.
The company will pilot the new program this year, making it easier for customers to buy their entire supply in one place, Neil Ventura, De Beers executive vice president of auction sales, said on Monday.
“One message that’s come through from our recent customer engagements is a desire for us to develop our supply offering in certain areas, so that there is a fuller and broader range of material available for purchase,” Ventura said.
“Based on this customer feedback, in 2018 we will be testing the potential to grow our core rough-diamond sales business through making some purchases from third-party sources,” he added.
The diamonds will come from miners which De Beers has carried out due diligence, and will only be a small minority of the goods De Beers offers.
The two Rough diamonds each weighing more than 100 carats were recovered by Gem Diamonds at the Lesotho mine in southern Africa.
Both rough Diamonds weight 117 carats and 110 carats are D color Type IIa diamonds.
Type IIa diamonds carbon bonds contain little or no nitrogen atoms making them very white and rare. These are the most expensive white diamonds.
Graff Jewellers a leader in the diamond business since 1960 has purchased the 476 carat rough diamond named The Meya Prosperity Diamond.
The Rough diamond was mined in Sierra Leone.
Graff paid $16.5 million for the exceptional rough diamond , another in a long line of extraordinary diamond bought by Graff.
The magnificent rough diamond is the 29th largest diamond ever recovered and is the fifth largest stone from Sierra Leone.
In 1940 when R.V. Cullinan the son of the renowned diamond magnate Sir Thomas Cullinan asked De Beers director Pierre De Villiers to buy him some diamonds on his next visit to Kimberley.
A collection of Fancy Vivid Yellow Diamonds owned by South Africa’s mining elite has sold at a Bonhams auction for well above its expected price.
The collection sold as two separate lots at the for a total of $773,350.
Diamond Miner Gem Diamonds has found a 202 carat rough diamond at its Letšeng mine in Lesotho, Sothern Africa. The rough diamond is the latest of seven recovered over 100 carats this year.
The D colour type IIa diamond was recovered when they mine switched to the higher grade K6 section of the main pipe earlier this year.
The Letšeng mine is one of the highest diamond deposits by value in the world with the an average price of $2,397 per carat for the July tender.
De Beers is planning to add the world’s largest custom built diamond mining vessel to its fleet at a cost of $142 million.
The ship will be the sixth belonging to Debmarine Namibia, a 50/50 joint venture between the miner and the Republic of Namibia, De Beers said Tuesday. Expected to begin operations in 2021, it will enhance the company’s ability to recover diamonds off the southern African country’s Atlantic coast, the rough producer added.
“There is a great amount of potential in Namibia’s marine diamond deposits, and this new vessel will support our strategy to continue to grow our offshore operations,” said De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver.
Earlier this year, De Beers launched the MV SS Nujoma, the world’s largest diamond sampling and exploration vessel. Acquiring the new ship will help the company capitalize on that vessel’s work, and support the long-term future of Namibia’s diamond sector, Cleaver added.
Kleven Verft, a Norwegian ship-building company that constructed the Nujoma, will also build the new vessel, and has signed a memorandum of understanding with De Beers.
Source: Diamonds.net
Dealers reported a difficult but stable rough market as De Beers’ November sight closed with a value of $455 million — 4% lower than the same period a year ago.
The rough market improved slightly from the October sight, which was the smallest sale of the year as Indian manufacturing slowed for Diwali. However, sightholders still noted weak profitability on De Beers goods during November, with premiums on the secondary market close to zero.
Most boxes of diamonds from last week’s sight commanded prices on the dealer market that did not cover the costs of doing deals, explained Dudu Harari of diamond broker Bluedax in a report on the sight.
Read More: diamonds.net
Due to resources dwindling Beers’ joint ventures will close four diamond mines by 2022.
Namdeb is a DeBeers project with the government of Namibia, Will close the Elizabeth Bay mine at the end of 2018 followed by the Daberas deposit at the end of 2019 and Sendelingsdrif in 2020. The main asset Southern Coastal will close in 2022.
Production saw a shift to offshore assets this past year. For the first nine months of 2017, Debmarine’s production surged 22% to 1.1 million carats.
Subdued world economic growth will make the next few years challenging, mainly due to negative impacts forecast in exchange rates and other indices.
More trouble for diamond miner Petra Diamonds yesterday after it warned it is heading into financial trouble with its lenders.
Petra has borrowed heavily to expand its operations in the country. The company is now likely to breach its banking covenants at the end of the year, because of the row with the government in Tanzania. As well as strikes at three of its mines in South Africa.
Petra diamonds is known for the size and quality of the diamonds produced at the famous Cullinan mine outside of Pretoria in South Africa.