JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed diamond miner Lucapa Diamond Company has recovered more special and fancy-coloured diamonds from its Angola-based Lulo diamond project in Angola, including a 59 ct Type I diamond and a 33 ct Type IIa D-colour gem.
These were the latest trial mining recoveries from Lulo’s E46 alluvial terraces.
This follow’s Lucapa’s announcement last month that it had recovered eight special diamonds (individual stones weighing more than 10.8 ct) from trial mining at E46, which included a 68 ct Type IIa D-colour gem.
The miner also recovered several pink diamonds from the trial site, including an intense-fancy 0.2 ct pink.
These pink recoveries – together with the 4 ct pink diamond recovered in the original exploration bulk sampling programme – suggested that the E46 diamond population would probably include fancy-coloured diamonds, as well as large, high-quality gems.
E46 was located about 10 km upstream of alluvial Mining Blocks 6 and 8, which have been the source of frequent special diamond recoveries of up to 404 ct.
E46 was the fourth area along a 20 km stretch of the Cacuilo river terraces to have produced special, gem-quality diamonds, providing further evidence that Lulo was in the heart of a large diamond province. E46 was also adjacent to the known diamond-bearing L46 and L19 kimberlites.
In 2015, Lucapa recovered two Type I kimberlite diamonds weighing 1.24 ct from preliminary bulk sampling at the L46 kimberlite.