The world's second-largest diamond found in Botswana

An unbroken 1,758-carat diamond was recently found by the Canadian company Lucara Diamond Corp who owns the Karowe Diamond Mine in Botswana.

The diamond is said to be bigger than a tennis ball, even though the diamond still does not measure up to the record-holder; the 3,016.75-carat Cullinan Diamond, which was discovered in South Africa in 1905.

lucaradiamond.com The stone was recovered through Lucara's state of the art XRT circuit, commissioned in April 2015. In a statement, the company said:

Weighing close to 352 grams and measuring 83mm x 62mm x 46mm, the diamond has been characterized as near gem of variable quality, including domains of high-quality white gem.

According to ABC News, the diamond is the largest Lucara has mined from its Botswana operations in recent years, beating its previous discoveries of a 472-carat and a 327-carat diamond recovered in 2018.

Until now, the previous record-holder for the second biggest diamond was the 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona diamond discovered in November 2015, was sold for $US53 million (R1 074 994 500,00) to British diamond dealer Graff Diamonds in 2017.

Lucara's technologically advanced, XRT diamond recovery circuit has once again delivered historic results, said Eira Thomas, Lucara's CEO in the statement.

Karowe has now produced two diamonds greater than 1,000 carats in just four years, affirming the coarse nature of the resource and the likelihood of recovering additional, large, high quality diamonds in the future, particularly as we mine deeper in the orebody and gain access to the geologically favourable EM/PK(S) unit, the source of both of our record-breaking, +1,000 carat diamonds.

Earlier this month, Firestone Diamonds announced that they also recovered a monster of a diamond' at its Liqhobong Mine in Lesotho.

The international diamond mining company with operations focused in Lesotho, released a statement saying that they recovered a 72-carat yellow diamond, along with two other spectacular gems.

The 72-carat diamond was recovered together with a 22-carat makeable white stone, followed by an 11-carat fancy light-pink stone. These diamonds will go on sale at the next tender which is scheduled to take place during May 2019.

Tags: BotswanaCullinan DiamondDiamonds

LINK:	https://www.thesouthafrican.com/diamond-botswana-lucara/...
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