Canadian miner Lucara has announced the discovery of a 166-carat Type IIa gem at its Karowe mine in Botswana, IDEX Online reports.
This marks the 328th diamond weighing over 100 carats recovered since commercial production started at Karowe in 2012. Karowe has been a prolific source of huge gems, yielding four diamonds weighing over 1,000 carats, with the most recent being a 1,080.1-carat gem found in August of 2023.
Among Lucara’s notable recoveries is the 1,109-carat diamond, the world’s largest gem-quality rough diamond found in over a century, discovered in November 2015. Graff Diamonds bought the stone in November 2017 for $53 million and transformed it into the 302.37-carat Graff Lesedi La Rona and 66 satellite stones. In April 2019, Lucara unearthed the 1,758-carat Sewelo diamond, the world’s third-largest rough. Louis Vuitton purchased it in January 2020 for an undisclosed sum.
CEO William Lamb commented: “This latest recovery further supports the economic rationale for investing in the underground expansion project that will extend mine life to at least 2040.”
