A diamond of exceptional size – the second largest in the world at 2,492 carats – but which barely fits in the palm of a hand, has been found in a mine in Botswana, a Canadian mining company announced on Thursday.
This half-kilo precious stone, detected in the Karowe mine in the north-east of Botswana, the leading African diamond producer, is “one of the largest rough diamonds ever discovered”, underlines the Lucara company in a press release.
According to the Botswana government and several experts, it is the second largest ever found in the earth.
In terms of carats, it is not far from the largest known diamond in the world, the “Cullinan”, of more than 3,100 carats, unearthed in South Africa in 1905.
“We are delighted to have recovered this extraordinary diamond,” Lucara CEO William Lamb said in the statement, which did not provide details on the value or quality of the find.
According to the Financial Timesciting sources close to Lucara, the stone could be worth more than $40 million.
Lucara Botswana Managing Director Naseem Lahri presented the stone to the country’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi on Thursday afternoon.
“I was told this is the largest diamond discovered in Botswana to date and the second largest in the world,” Mr Masisi said, congratulating the company.
“With a diamond of this size, you can build roads,” the president added.
Lucara said it pays the Botswana government a royalty of 10% of the gross sales value of diamonds produced in Karowe.
X-ray detection
“The historic discovery of this rough diamond, the largest in 120 years, is exciting,” said Tobias Kormind, Managing Director of 77 Diamonds, Europe’s largest online jeweller.
According to him, this large, largely translucent stone is “the largest rough diamond unearthed since the discovery of the ‘Cullinan’ diamond”, which had been cut into several pieces, the largest of which were set in the British Crown Jewels.
This discovery is “largely due to a recent technology” of X-ray detection, developed by the company Lucara and used since 2017, “which allows larger precious stones to be extracted from the ground without them breaking”, underlines the specialist.
“So it’s likely that we’ll see more of these” emerge, he added.
The Karowe mine began production in 2012 and Lucara has since sold 216 diamonds worth more than $1 million and 11 diamonds worth more than $10 million, according to the company.
Botswana is one of the world’s largest producers of diamonds by volume, and the largest by value according to the IMF. They are its main source of income, accounting for 30% of its GDP and 80% of its exports.
As Lucara points out in its press release, diamond revenues bring Botswana “considerable socio-economic benefits”, financing “essential areas such as education and health” as well as infrastructure in this country of 2.6 million people.
Before the discovery announced Thursday, the largest diamond discovered in Botswana was a 1,758-carat stone also mined by Lucara in 2019 and named “Sewelo,” meaning “rare discovery” in the Tswana language.
The size of a tennis ball, it was purchased by Louis Vuitton, the flagship brand of luxury giant LVMH, for an undisclosed price.
Lucara recalls in its press release that it also found a 1,174-carat diamond in Botswana in 2021, using the same X-ray technology used to identify the exceptionally large rough diamond this week.