Canada-based company Lucara recently announced the discovery of a 1,111-carat diamond at its Karowe mine in Botswana.
A statement said the type IIa, 65mm x 56mm x 40mm stone was “the world’s second largest gem-quality diamond ever recovered”.
The largest gem-quality rough diamond discovered to date is the Cullinan diamond, which was found in the Cullinan mine in South Africa in 1905 at a weight of 3,106 carats.
The famous stone has since been cut into smaller pieces, with the largest stones set in the British Crown Jewels and within the personal possession of Britain’s royal family.
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Commenting on what he described as a “historic diamond recovery”, Lucara president and CEO William Lamb said, “The significance of the recovery of a gem-quality stone larger than 1,000 carats, the largest for more than a century … cannot be overstated.”
The company also claimed two other titles for the sizeable stone: largest diamond ever recovered in Botswana and largest mined using a modern processing facility.
A newly installed large diamond recovery XRT (x-ray transmission) machine was said to have been used to extract the stone.
“Our focus on mining the south lobe [of the Karowe mine], which is delivering value beyond expectation, has been perfectly timed with the commissioning of our recent plant modifications, enabling the recovery of these large, high-quality exceptional diamonds,” Lamb explained.
Only a day later, the company announced it had recovered two more large diamonds from the same mine using XRT technology.
The stones were said to be 813 carats and 374 carats in size, although it was noted that their weights were likely to change after cleaning.
“This has been an amazing week for Lucara with the recovery of the second largest and also the sixth largest gem-quality diamonds ever mined,” Lamb stated.
It was reported that Lucara had not yet decided how the stones would be sold, but that the sale would likely take place in the first half of 2016 with the 1,111-carat diamond to be sold separately to the other two stones.
It was also widely reported that Lucara refused to speculate on the stones’ values.
Jeweller contacted Lucara for further comment but the company had not responded by the time of publication.
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