Lucapa Diamond Company Limited and its partners, Empresa Nacional de Diamantes E.P. and Rosas & Petalas, has announced the recovery of more large diamonds from the Lulo Diamond Project in Angola.
The latest recoveries of large diamonds include Type IIa diamonds weighing 83 carats and 68 carats. In addition, recent recoveries include five +50 carat diamonds.
The latest large diamond recoveries follow the return of alluvial mining activities to Mining Block 8 at the Lulo project, which has been a prolific producer of large and premium-value diamonds including Angola’s biggest recorded diamond - the 404 carat 4th February Stone, which sold for US$16 million.
These seven +50 carat stones will be included in the next parcel of Lulo diamonds to be sold by Lulo mining company Sociedade Mineira Do Lulo. That sale is scheduled for September 2017.
As previously advised, the strong cash flows generated from the sale of Lulo diamonds have enabled Sociedade Mineira to repay loan funding advanced by Lucapa to develop the alluvial exploration and mining operations.
Lucapa has now received US$3.8 million of the US$4 million loan repayment approved by Sociedade Mineira, with the remaining amount in the process of being repatriated. Lucapa has also left its US$1.6 million share of the Sociedade Mineira distribution in Angola to fund the Lulo kimberlite exploration program, which aims to identify the primary hard-rock sources of the exceptional Lulo alluvial diamonds being recovered, which achieved the highest per carat sale prices in the world in 2016.
This aggressive exploration program involves three rigs drilling kimberlite targets which were upgraded and re-classified from the results of an extensive Time Domain Electromagnetic survey flown over the Cacuilo Valley area, where the Lulo alluvial mining operations are focused.