Lucara Diamond Corp. said it has recovered a 341.9 carat gem quality diamond from its Karowe Mine in Botswana. According to the company, the stone was recovered while processing fragmental kimberlite from the central and south lobe interface.
The Type IIa diamond shows exceptional colour and clarity and will be sold along with two other greater than 100 carat diamonds which have also been recovered, stated the company.
Lucara President and Chief Executive Officer, William Lamb said the recovery of this magnificent stone once again confirms the quality of diamonds contained within the Karowe resource adding that timing of the sale of these exceptional stones is still to be decided.
“The surprise recovery of the 7.8 carat diamond from the very small quantity of material processed during commissioning of the XRT machines demonstrates the excellent recovery capability of this exciting technology,” Lamb said.

 
“The final integration of the last sections into the process plant will provide improved mine planning flexibility and allow us to once again access material from all three lobes and more importantly provide the ability to mine sustainably from the high value south lobe in the future.”
Lucara added excellent progress continues to be made on the plant optimisation project at Karowe. Construction activities are essentially complete and commissioning activities of the final sections has commenced.

 
“Tracer testing of the new XRT diamond recovery machines has been completed. A small volume of material was processed through the machines to check material handling aspects which lead to the recovery of a 7.8 carat diamond,” said the company.
“It is expected that the new recovery and XRT sections will be integrated into the main treatment plant before the end of April 2015.”