The Angolan diamond company Lucapa announced today that it has extracted the fifth diamond over one hundred carats from the Angolan Lulo mine this year, the eighth largest discovery since it began alluvial operations in 2015.
It is a 176-carat type IIa diamond, a category that includes only two percent of the world’s diamonds, characterized by high transparency and purity, extracted from the alluvial mine, the company stated.
“It is the 45th diamond over 100 carats to be recovered from Lulo and the eighth largest since the start of alluvial operations in 2015,” the company said in a statement, highlighting that the recovery of these high-value diamonds has been an important source of revenue for the Lulo mine, managed by Australia’s Lucapa, Angola’s state-owned Endiama, and the private company Rosa & Pétalas.
Lucapa is currently conducting a kimberlite exploration program (rocks from which diamonds are extracted) and is collecting kimberlite samples near the mining blocks where the 176-carat diamond was extracted.
According to Lucapa’s Managing Director and CEO, Nick Selby, quoted in the statement, “the recovery of this 176-carat diamond is further confirmation of the enormous potential” of the kimberlites, where the company is focusing its efforts.