Lucapa Diamond, which has a 70 percent stake in Lesotho’s Mothae, said more than 5,000 carats will be placed under the hammer at its first run of mine sale in Antwerp.  
The tender comes weeks after seven large diamonds, weighing 498 carats, from the company’s 40 percent-owned Lulo alluvial mine, in Angola were sold for $16.7 million or at an average price of $33,530 per carat.  

“Viewings will happen third week of February and the tender will conclude the last week of February...,” company chief executive Stephen Wetherall told Rough & Polished. 
Lucapa said specials being recovered at Mothae included high colour whites weighing 78 carats and 38 carats as well as an 89 carat yellow.  

Lucapa acquired the mine in 2017 and it installed a new Mothae plant, which incorporated advanced diamond recovery technology, including two XRT diamond recovery modules designed to recover large and rare Type IIa diamonds.  

More than 4,100 carats of diamonds had been recovered from the bulk sampling of areas within the Mothae kimberlite pipe which had not previously been or had been inadequately tested during the previous trial mining phase.  

Lucapa previously said it was targeting to produce about 44,000 carats of diamonds at Mothae over the first three years of commercial recoveries.   

An independent JORC resource estimate for Mothae was 1 million carats of diamonds at a modelled average diamond value of $1,063/carat – the second highest JORC average price per carat in the world. 

Source: Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished