Cassiar Gold Corp. (TSXV: GLDC, OTCQX: CGLCF)
Revitalizing the Cassiar Gold District in British Columbia, Canada
Canada’s Lucara Diamond (TSX: LUC) announced on Wednesday that it had discovered a 2,492-carat diamond at one of its mines in Botswana. This is the second largest natural diamond ever unearthed in the world, after the Cullinan diamond, which was unearthed in South Africa at the beginning of the last century, weighing 3,106 carats.
The discovery was made at the Karowe mine operated by Lucara in Botswana, and was identified and recovered using the company’s X-ray transmission (XRT) technology for giant diamonds. The company has been applying this technology since 2017 to identify and preserve large, high-value diamonds.
Botswana is one of the world’s largest diamond producers, accounting for about 20 per cent of global diamond production, and the diamond trade alone made Botswana a middle-income country in the world. And the Karowe mine is particularly known for producing huge diamonds, averaging 300,000 carats of high-value diamonds per year.
In 2019, Lukala discovered a 1,758-carat diamond at the Karowe mine, but it did not reach gemstone grade. In 2015, the company discovered a 1,111-carat diamond at Karowe, which was eventually sold for $53 million. After that, a 813-carat gemstone was sold a record $63 million. Both diamonds are Type-IIa diamonds of the highest grade.
Following the news, Lucara’s stock price on the Toronto Stock Exchange shot up, surging more than 80 per cent at one point and still recording a 35 per cent one-day gain at the close.
Data from StoneAlgo, an online diamond-buying platform, shows that the average price of a 1-carat diamond is now $4,115, down 7.51 per cent since March.
