Lucara Granted Mothae Project Mining Lease

Lucara Diamond Corp. has been granted a diamond mining lease for the Mothae project in Lesotho by the Lesotho Department of Natural Resources, the company announced Monday. The lease has an initial term of 10 years and is renewable for an additional 10 years.

Lucara will hold a 75 percent interest in the project, the rest will be held by the Government of Lesotho. Half of the governments share in the project will be a free carried interest and one half will be funded by the government through its share of project dividends.

During an initial pre-production test mining stage, the government will receive four percent royalty from Mothae diamonds sales. At full production, the royalty will increase to 8 percent of diamond sales value.

“This is a major step forward for the Mothae project,” said Lucara’s President and COO William Lamb. “Having secured the mining lease, we can now move forward with plans for pre-production test mining which are designed to increase our confidence in the economic potential of the Mothae kimberlite through the validation of diamond grade and value information that was generated in the recently completed bulk sampling program.”

The Mothae kimberlite pipe is located in northeast Lesotho. Mothae is a large (8.8 hectare surface area) low grade kimberlite which contains a significant population of large, high value Type IIa diamonds. Lucara completed a 100,000 ton bulk sample in April which yielded an average stone size of 0.44 carats per stone and a sample grade of 4.7 carats per 100 tons

A diamond valuation exercise completed in June resulted in a modeled diamond value for of $549 per carat.

Lucara is planning to mine up to 720,000 tons of kimberlite from the upper weathered zone of the Mothae kimberlite over a two year period, as a pre-production test mining effort to validate current diamond grade and value estimates.