TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Brazil-based miner Brazil Minerals (BMIX), a US holding company with revenues from gold and diamonds, said on Thursday that diamonds cut and polished at its own facility and graded at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), had achieved an average value of $3 250/ct according to the Rapaport scale.
The company stated that the amount compared “very favourably” to the $130/ct seen in sales of rough diamonds from its mine, which closely followed the global pricing for rough diamonds.
The Rapaport valuation guide is the most widely used pricing measure for polished diamonds in the industry. The valuation of a gem takes into account its shape, size, colour and clarity. Buyers and sellers usually negotiate a final transactional price based on the Rapaport value.
Given the established quality of its polished diamonds, Brazil Minerals reported that it had sold ungraded polished diamonds to knowledgeable private buyers in Brazil. These buyers expressed further demand for the company’s polished diamonds and, therefore, a new channel for sales had been created.
The company also periodically sells GIA-graded polished diamonds to US private buyers and ungraded polished diamonds to an 11-store jewellery chain in Brazil that has been in operation since 1944 and caters to the high-end market.
On September 12, BMIX finalised the acquisition of Mineração Duas Barras (MDB), a Brazilian miner and producer of rough as well as its own cut and polished diamonds, 96%-purity gold bars and high-quality, industrial-use sand.
MDB has a fully operational mining concession, the largest alluvial processing plant for diamonds and gold in Latin America, and holds a Brazilian federal permit to export its production.