The Diamond Certification Laboratory of Australia (DCLA)
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Gem Diamonds has recovered another 100 carat plus rough diamond this year.
The recovery of the D colour type IIa stone shortly after the recovery of a 910 carat D colour IIa rough diamond from Letšeng last week.
Gem Diamonds began extracting ore from a higher grade part of Letšeng last year, resulting in the increase of large stones.
Gem Diamonds Letseng mine is located in the mountainous kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa.
De Beers reported steady demand for rough diamonds at its December sight as sales showed an increase over the equivalent period last year.
The miner sold $450 million worth of rough in its final sales cycle of the year, including last week’s sight in Gaborone and its auctions, it reported Tuesday. Provisional proceeds rose 6.6% compared with actual sales for the same period last year, though they slipped 3.4% from November sales.
Read More: diamonds.net
The largest diamond offered at an auction went under the hammer in Geneva Tuesday setting a world record for a diamond of its shape.
The D colour 11A type flawless diamond was Polished from a 404 carat rough diamond which was recovered in February 2016 in the Lulo mine in Angola.
The 163.41 carat called The Art of Grisogono, sold for $33.8 million, after taxes and commissions, at the Christie’s autumn jewellery auction.
Alrosa the Russian miner and top diamond producer by output, recovered three gem quality large rough diamonds.
A 82.82 carat, a 108.34 carat, and a 163.11 carat all light yellow or yellow.
All three rough diamonds were recovered at the Jubilee kimberlite pipe, one of Alrosa’s Mining units Aikhalsky in the country’s northeast.
The three diamonds will be sent to Alrosa’s for assessment in the coming days.
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.
De Beers’ October sight closed with a value of $370 million as rough-diamond buying slowed due to holidays and sightholders reported a sluggish dealer market.
Proceeds from the miner’s eighth sales cycle fell 27% from $507 million in the previous sight in August, and dropped 25% compared with the equivalent period a year ago, according to Rapaport records. Rough prices were largely unchanged from the previous sight, sightholders noted, with many dealers on the secondary market struggling to make a profit on the goods or even cover costs.
De Beers offered fewer rough diamonds for sale during the month as last week’s sight occurred during a period when polishing factories in India and Israel were closed for religious holidays, the company’s CEO Bruce Cleaver explained Tuesday.
“Sales were in line with expectations, at what is a seasonally slower time for rough-diamond demand,” Cleaver added.
The Indian cutting industry is preparing to close for Diwali, which occurs this Thursday. Buyers brought rough purchases forward to the July sales cycle because of the relatively early date of the festival this year, De Beers noted at previous sights. The last two sights have both been significantly smaller than a year ago as a result.
Sightholders were optimistic about the end-of-year holiday season, even as De Beers’ rough sales have declined 7% to $4.38 billion for the year to date, Rapaport records show. Russian miner Alrosa echoed this positive outlook, also noting that the timing of Diwali had weakened sales in September.
“We expect the traditional revival of the market situation in the fourth quarter, as the industry starts to prepare for the winter holiday season,” Alrosa vice president Yury Okoyomov said last week.
Source: diamonds.net
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.
Geologists have discovered what they refer to as young diamonds, after analyzing a number of rough diamonds.
It now appears the creation of rough diamonds, may have occurred later in the Earth’s history than was previously thought. Diamond requires extreme temperatures and pressures to form. Geologists though these conditions only existed in the early formation of Earth.
Small impurities in the diamonds could indicate the conditions in which they are formed. So 26 diamonds donated by the De Beers Group where analyzed by a research team in Amsterdam.
Sm-Nd isotope techniques are used by researchers to analyzed the sampled garnet inclusions, Which are a common mineral found in Earth’s mantle and sometimes within the diamonds.
The scientists discovered two sets of diamonds, one of Archaean age 2.95 billion years old thought to be the original source of the diamonds. And then surprisingly the other of Proterozoic age 1.15 billion years old.
The world’s second largest 1,109 carat rough diamond discovered two years ago, has prompted the Botswana government to amend the law giving it first option to buy unusually large diamonds.
Botswana’s success has been due to the rough diamond mines.
An official told a local newspaper that it referred to stones that were unusually large, were particularly clear or had a rare colour.
The price will agreed between the government and the producer, both parties with the current market price of the rough stones.
The Tanzanian governments confrontational approach to miners operating in the country including Petra Diamonds, has led to Petra suspending operations at its mine.
The Tanzanian government seized a shipment of rough diamonds belonging to Petra. They also question and held a number of staff in the latest assault on the African country’s mining sector.
This includes the concentrate exports ban and the non repayment of value added tax.