Lucara announces recovery of a 257 carat diamond in Botswana

Canadian mining and exploring company Lucara Diamond has announced recovery of an exceptional 257 carat diamond in its diamond mine in Botswana. Lucara Diamonds\'s chief executive officer William Lamb said in a statement on Wednesday that the recovery of this 257 carat diamond, along with the recovery of a significant parcel of larger stones over the past 6 months, strengthens the company\'s understanding of the resource at Karowe mine. \"The Karowe mine continues to outperform with the consistent recovery of large, high value diamonds,\" said Lamb. According to the company, there have been 47 diamonds recovered that were larger than 50 carat and of 14 them were larger than 100 carats so far in 2013. The exceptional 257 carat, beautiful and clear diamond, will be sold on tender in the fourth quarter of 2013. \"Revenues generated from the sale of these diamonds will be used to reduce debt and strengthen Lucara\'s balance sheet,\" said Lamb. Meanwhile Lucara also closed its sixth rough diamond tender for the year where all lots were sold with very strong results. \"With the challenges currently facing the rough diamond market, the demand for the high quality goods produced by Karowe has remained consistently high. The results of the sale will be reported in our third quarter results which are expected to be released in early November 2013.\" Lucara is a well positioned new diamond producer with two key assets-Karowe Mine in Botswana and the Mothae Project in Lesotho. The 100 percent owned Karowe Mine is in production while 75 percent owned Mothae Project has completed its trial mining program. The company annound in March recovery of a 239.2 carat rough diamond in Karowe Mine, while a rare 9 carat blue stone was unearthed in the mine in 2012. It was later sold for 4.5 million U. S. dollars. Karowe Mine, officially opened in August 2012, is currently the only one diamond mine that operats outside the Debswana system, the biggest diamond miner in Botswana and a 50/50 joint venture between Botswana government and De Beers. The mine is estimated to contain 6.3 million carats from surface to a depth of 324 meters. Indicated resource from surface to a depth of 400 meters contains 8.2 million carats, and inferred resource from 400 meters to 750 meters contains 4 million carats. Lucara has mined 303,060 carats in 2012 and projected to mine 400,000 carats in 2013. It aims to generate 15 million dollars of free cash flow before exiting the year.