In just six days, four huge flawless diamonds have been discovered at Lesotho's Letseng diamond mine high in the Maluti mountains.
The four stones together weigh 366 carats and mine chief executive Keith Whitelock says he expects them to fetch a minimum of $6-million (R36-million).
"Each one is of the highest quality of white stone -- D flawless," said Whitelock "there is a world-wide shortage of large high-quality stones so $6-million might even be a little conservative."
Letseng was only officially opened last year after investment from Brett Kebble's mining finance company JCI and is already exceeding expectations.
The mine is now jointly owned by JCI Limited, Matodzi Resources and the Lesotho government.
"Letseng is unique because it regularly produces very large high quality stones," said Whitelock.
"The big stones we have just discovered were found in the normal course of production. Because we know that very big stones appear regularly, we had to design a recovery process that would recognise much larger gems than are usually found in other diamond mines; fortunately the process is working well."
The run of good fortune began on January 21 when a flawless 76-carat stone was recovered. This was followed two days later by a 112-carat stone. On January 25 a 106-carat beauty turned up and a further 72-carat stone was recovered on January 26.
Read the rest of the story at http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=196275&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__business/
Learn more about diamonds at http://www.diamondsourceva.com/
Comments