Lucapa Finds 63-Carat Type IIa Diamond at Lulo

(IDEX Online News) – The finds keep coming at the Lulo Diamond Concession in Angola. The latest notable discovery for Lucapa Diamond Company Limited is a 63.05-carat, Type IIa stone, which was recovered from the concession’s alluvial mining operation.

The diamond was recovered from mining area 31 at Lulo, which is north of the 150 ton per hour diamond processing plant. It is the third-largest diamond recovered at Lulo behind the 131.40 carat and 95.45 carat gems recovered from the original bulk sampling activities much further south of the plant and the largest since Lucapa and its partners began commercial alluvial diamond mining operations at Lulo in January.

“This exceptional recovery further underlines the potential of the Lulo diamond field to consistently produce large gems of exceptional quality across the whole mining license area,” said chief executive Stephen Wetherall.  

“The consistent recovery of large special stones of Type IIa nature materially impacts the overall average dollar per carat of the production and therefore the economics of our diamond mining and exploration activities at Lulo.”

Wetherall added that given that the diamond mining results achieved to date have mirrored initial estimates derived from the company’s bulk sampling grades, it is confident of recovering more exceptional diamonds from this higher grade area.

“Our ultimate goal at Lulo is to locate the primary kimberlite source or sources from the priority kimberlite targets identified at Lulo, which include the four pipes that preliminary testing has already shown to be diamond-bearing – and our recently announced kimberlite diamond program aims to achieve this.”