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 | Wed, 29 Nov 2006 |
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GEM sparkler may fetch $10m Posted: Thu, 05 Oct 2006 [miningmx.com] -- GEM Diamond Mining Company (GEM), the diamond firm scheduled to list in London by the year-end, said it hoped to receive a minimum of $10m (approximately R80m) for the recently discovered 603 carat white diamond, dubbed ‘Lesotho Promise’. The unpolished stone, the world’s fifteenth largest, was discovered at GEM’s Letseng diamond mine, in Lesotho. This is only weeks after buying the mine from South African mining house JCI and listed empowerment firm, Matodzi Resources. GEM, which bought Letseng for about R880m, owns 70% of the mine. The balance is owned by Lesotho’s government. “I would like to put some pressure on the buyer. I think a figure of around $10m is something that we are expecting it to achieve as the minimum,” said Clifford Elphick, CEO of GEM. He was speaking on The World at Six, a business radio programme broadcast on South Africa’s 702. “But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is such a rare thing this that it is going to be a case of this appealing to a particular buyer,” he said. GEM said on October 4 the stone would be sold through private tender in Antwerp scheduled to be completed by October 9. The Lesotho Promise is the largest ever recovered at Letseng ahead of the 601 carat ‘Lesotho Brown’, found in 1967. The world’s largest diamond is the Cullinan which is over 3,000 carats. Cracks in the Lesotho Promise, however, meant that it would be cut into a number of smaller gems. “It does have a couple of glitches, which are really cracks in it and so unfortunately it won’t polish into a single stone,” Elphick said. “It will polish into a number of stones, probably an 80 carat being the biggest, and maybe another 70, but still, significant, and the quality is the very best.”Free news alerts: click here to subscribe
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