Sourcing

Trial Run Keeps Yielding Type IIa Diamonds for Lucapa

SourcingApr 28, 2016

Trial Run Keeps Yielding Type IIa Diamonds for Lucapa

The mining company has recovered three more big diamonds from its mine in Angola and two of them are high-color, Type IIa stones.

20160428_Lulo-diamonds.jpg
The 88-carat rough diamonds recently found at the Lulo Diamond Project in Angola is a D color stone while the smaller 33-carat diamond is E color, Lucapa said. Both diamonds are Type IIa.

Perth, Western Australia--Lucapa Diamond Company Ltd. announced this week that it has recovered three more big diamonds, two of them Type IIa, from an area of its Lulo Diamond Project in Angola where mining has just begun.

Found during trial mining of the E46 alluvial terraces at Lulo, the latest three “specials” include two high-color Type IIa diamonds of 88 and 30 carats. (Specials refer to diamonds that weigh more than 10.8 carats.)

Lucapa said that these three diamonds add to the 10 specials already found at E46 since it started mining there last month. The mining company added that more than 30 percent of rough diamonds that are larger than one carat recovered from the site are turning out to be Type IIa diamonds.

Type IIas are diamonds that are void of nitrogen and boron; only 2 percent of the world’s mined diamonds are classified as Type IIa.

The largest Type IIa find at Lulo so far has been the 404.2-carat diamond that was recovered in February.  

The mining company sold that stone, the 27th largest known diamond in the world, for $16 million, or nearly $40,000 per carat.

Michelle Graffis the editor-in-chief at National Jeweler, directing the publication’s coverage both online and in print.

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