Diamond miner Lucapa made $5.7 million from its latest diamond sale, but it is holding back a number of “premium” diamonds to sell later.
Year-to-date diamond sales from the flagship “Lulo” mine in Angola are now $33.5m, reaping an average price of $1850 per carat. The latest sale of 3411 carats averaging $1670 per carat.
Lucapa (ASX:LOM) told investors the latest sale excluded a “select parcel of large and premium value Lulo diamonds” which will be sold later in the quarter when Angola’s new diamond marketing policy kicks in.
Enacted in August this year, this policy is one of the measures being introduced to increase foreign investment in Angola’s diamond sector.
“Significant additional value will accrue to Lucapa and its Lulo partners from marketing these select specials under the new marketing policy,” Lucapa told investors.
Lulo is Lucapa’s flagship asset – it has produced over 11 diamonds of over 100 carats to date and is the highest dollar-per-carat alluvial diamond mine in the world.
Lucapa also expected first commercial diamond recoveries from its second African mine in November.
The diamond miner has kicked off commissioning of the 1.1-million-tonne-per annum project known as “Mothae” in Lesotho – a landlocked country surrounded by South Africa.
Lucapa recovered about 23,400 carats during the trial mining phase, including “specials” of up to 254 carats and 96 individual stones weighing more than 10 carats.
Some of these trial mining diamonds fetched prices of up to $78,000 per carat.
The miner had $4m cash in the bank at the end of September.