Gem Diamonds Limited (LSE: GEMD) is pleased to announce the recovery of a high quality 113 carat white Type II diamond, recovered at the Letšeng mine in Lesotho on 17 February 2024.
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Together with the 295 carat high quality Type II white diamond recovered on 8 January 2024 and a 139 carat low quality Boart diamond recovered on 17 January 2024, the 113 carat is the third greater than 100 carat diamond recovered to date this year.
The Baselworld fair has received much criticism in recent years, but one of the final shows before its public implosion appears to have facilitated a diamond deal that counts among the biggest in history.
Antwerp-based manufacturers Taché and Samir Gems came to the March 2018 exhibition with the exquisite Lesotho Legend, a 910-carat, type IIa diamond they had bought together from Gem Diamonds for $40 million earlier that month. At the time, jewelers such as Graff and Harry Winston dominated the big-stone market. Displaying the massive rough at the prestigious Swiss event could help drum up broader interest in the category, Taché and Samir believed.
“We felt that the market was a bit saturated between one or two players,” says Jean-Jacques Taché, managing director for sales at Taché, from his office in Tel Aviv, Israel. “So we thought, let’s bring it to Basel, let’s…showcase the [rough], and let’s see the reactions.”
Plenty of visitors wanted selfies with the stone, which came from the famous Letšeng mine in Lesotho. Some suggested buying a sliver of the piece — polished of, say, 5 to 20 carats, Taché recalls. However, “none of them were really committed at that point to enter into a venture.”
The exception was Van Cleef & Arpels, a Richemont-owned luxury brand that, Taché explains, had been somewhat pulling back from big stones in recent years.
“From the minute they saw it, [Van Cleef] started to talk about the idea that they had,” the executive adds. The timing was perfect: The luxury brand had just finished a ruby collection and was seeking a new project on which to spend a few years. “Sometimes you need a lot of things to happen at the same time in order to make it a success.”
The buying executive representing Van Cleef needed approval from Nicolas Bos, the brand’s CEO, and the Richemont team. Not long after the event, Taché, Samir and Van Cleef signed an agreement calling for the jeweler to buy the final polished. The condition was that the finished goods met the French house’s high quality criteria.
Long wait
Only this month did Van Cleef reveal the finished jewelry, more than four years after the initial pitch. The result was a unique collection of 25 Mystery Set jewels featuring 67 D-flawless diamonds. The largest is an oval, 79.35-carat stone that takes pride of place in a necklace called Atours Mystérieux, meaning “mysterious attire.” The smallest is 0.29 carats. The parties have not disclosed the polished sale price.
Taché and Samir both took heavy risks by splurging on the rough back in 2018. (Gem Diamonds publicly named Samir as the buyer: As is often the case, a miner only invoices one entity, but the purchase was really a 50:50 partnership.)
The two companies have a long-standing collaboration, having also bought the 341.9-carat Queen of Kalahari together from Lucara Diamond Corp. a few years earlier. They sold that polished to Chopard. Samir has its expertise in purchasing large rough stones; Taché specializes more in relationships with the top jewelry brands.
“We’re the most successful Jewish-Indian partnership on the market, by far,” says Taché.
They outsourced the cutting and polishing to Diamcad, an Antwerp firm that also manufactured the Lesedi La Rona for Graff. The goods went for grading at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) in New York, where all the stones received Diamond Origin Reports stating that they were from the Lesotho Legend.
Van Cleef took delivery of the polished as each stone was ready between January 2019 and March 2020, Taché notes. However, Covid-19 delayed the launch, as Van Cleef had been hoping to hold roadshows.
; Jean-Jacques Taché and Anjal Bhansali
Quality over size
The manufacturers agreed to include Van Cleef throughout the process, including in the planning and design. The Taché and Samir teams even traveled with Van Cleef’s Bos to Lesotho in May 2019 to experience the Letšeng mine and learn about the local community there.
The brand would accept only flawless goods, so quality became a higher priority than size. The planning process, which took about seven months in 2018, saw the parties review around 180 possible combinations of outcomes. None of them included any “monster” stones, they note.
“Instead of 67 stones, you could also have a model with probably 12 pieces only, but [it would have been] much less interesting in terms of creation,” Taché continues.
There were other complicating factors. Van Cleef tends to avoid round and heart-shaped diamonds. It also wanted matching pairs: “Practically every stone in this collection between 10 and 30 carats is a couple,” he points out.
“If we went for something which was 100-carats-plus, we would have had to go into the VS range,” comments Antwerp-based Anjal Bhansali, managing director at Samir. The team even broke up a stone of roughly 75 carats into two matching stones weighing around 30 carats each, Bhansali reveals.
Boost for big stones
The manufacturers hope the collection will succeed in reinvigorating the large-diamond sector, expanding it beyond the traditional two giants.
“The goal is to create more awareness for big stones in the market and to bring in new players,” Taché concludes. “We started it with Chopard. We [are continuing] this now with Van Cleef.”
It’s unclear whether the Basel show will ever return. However, everyone involved in the Lesotho Legend project will agree that the 2018 edition was well worth it.
Africa-focused Gem Diamonds has found a 125 carat rough stone at its Letšeng mine in Lesotho, the miner’s second rock over 100 carats mined this year.
The company, known for the recovery of large, high quality stones in 2020, has seen output of high quality diamonds surpassing the 100 carat mark become less frequent over the past year.
In 2021, Gem Diamonds found only six of such diamonds at Letšeng, compared to the 16 it discovered in 2020.
The find comes as prices for small diamonds have jumped about 20% since the start of March, as cutters, polishers and traders struggle to source stones outside Russia.
State owned Russian miner Alrosa, the world’s top diamond producer by output, was hit with US sanctions following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Higher prices for lower end stones are good news for miners, but not a game changer, experts say. While every mine is different, a general rule is that 20% of production the best stones account for about 80% of profits.
Since acquiring Letšeng in 2006, the company has found more than 60 white gem quality diamonds over 100 carats each, with 16 of them recovered last year. At an average elevation of 3,100 metres (10,000 feet) above sea level, Letšeng is also one of the world’s highest diamond mines.
Gem Diamonds has unearthed two large rough stones from its Letšeng mine in Lesotho, marking the fourth and fifth diamonds from the deposit over 100 carats this year.
The stones — weighing 245 and 102 carats — are high-quality, white, type II diamonds, the miner said Monday. The company found both stones on the same day.
The recoveries follow that of two diamonds weighing 370 and 254 carats in May. The company also discovered a 146.9-carat rough in January.
Output of large stones has been sluggish in the first half of the year as Gem Diamonds mined lower-value areas of the deposit, it explained. In the first six months of the year, the company unearthed three 100-carat-plus diamonds, compared to seven in the same period of 2020. Last year, Gem Diamonds recovered 13 stones greater than 100 carats by September 30, and 16 for the full year.
Gem Diamonds has announced the recovery of a high quality 254 carat Type II, white diamond, from the Letšeng mine in Lesotho, the highest dollar per carat kimberlite diamond mine in the world.
“It is pleasing to see that carat production during the Q1,2021 is up some 11% on the same period in 2020 and the average price of US$1 630 per carat is also slightly up on Q1,2020,” said CEO, Clifford Elphick in last month’s Q1,2021 report.
“Although the production from the mining mix was not as impressive as the second half of 2020, with fewer large diamonds recovered due to the areas accessed under the mining plan, prices achieved on a like for like basis remained strong for Letšeng’s high value diamond production.
“It is anticipated that the mining mix should improve over the coming months as the richer parts of the Satellite pit are accessed in accordance with the mine plan.”
Gem Diamonds has recovered a 179 carat rough diamond from its Letšeng mine in Lesotho.
The miner found the high quality, type I diamond on Thanksgiving Day, it said last week. The stone is the 16th diamond over 100 carats the company has found this year. Earlier this month, Gem Diamonds unearthed 104 and 111 carat specimens from the deposit.
The company has already found more diamonds over 100 carats this year than in 2019, when it reported 11 rough diamonds of that magnitude.
Letšeng also yielded a 14.09 carat, pink, type II diamond of high quality last week from its mine in Lesotho.
The miner unearthed the “top quality” type II stone from the deposit on November 24, it said Wednesday. The discovery comes after the company found a 77 carat yellow diamond at the mine in September.
Gem Diamonds has also found 14 diamonds weighing over 100 carats this year, including 104 and 111 carat diamonds earlier this month.
Africa-focused Gem Diamonds became on Wednesday the latest miner to show signs of a slow but steady recovery in the market after showing it had swung to positive cash flow and slashed debt on the back of rising diamond prices.
The company reduced its net debt position by $6.6 million in the July-September quarter, ending the period with $1.1 million in cash. This compares to a net debt of $5.5 million in the first half of the year.
The sale of seven diamonds for more than $1 million each helped the miner’s bottom line, generating revenue of $25.6 million during the period.
The company achieved an average diamond price in the third quarter of $2,215 per carat, up from $1,714 per carat in the first half of the year.
“These prices achieved, on a like-for-like basis, are higher than those realized in the pre-covid-19 market conditions of the second half of the 2019 [financial year]”, chief executive Clifford Elphick said in the statement.
The apparent ongoing recovery in the diamond market is still thought to be fragile. De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer by value, said in early October it was too early to be sure of a sustained upturn in trading conditions.
“Whilst the market has been defibrillated, we think it will remain in intensive care for some time, although any improvement is good news for the smaller pure play producers with weak balance sheets,” BMO Analyst Edward Sterck said in a note last month.
Letšeng back at full tilt Gem Diamond’s Letšeng mine in Lesotho returned to full ore mining and treatment capacity in a phased manner during the second quarter, the company said.
Enhanced focus on stability and overall uptime of the Letšeng plants resulted in a conscious decision to reduce the instantaneous feed rate to each plant to reduce feed variability and enhance recovery, Gem noted.
Since acquiring Letšeng in 2006, Gem Diamonds has found more than 60 white gem quality diamonds over 100 carats each, which makes the mine the world’s highest dollar per carat kimberlite diamond operation.
The company recently secured a 10-year extension for its mining lease, with the government of Lesotho granting the company exclusive rights for further renewals.
At an average elevation of 3,100 metres (10,000 feet) above sea level, Letšeng is also one of the world’s highest diamond mines.
Gem Diamonds has recovered a high quality 233 ct Type II white diamond from its 70% owned Letšeng mine, in Lesotho, the highest dollar per carat kimberlite diamond mine in the world.
This follows the recent recovery of a high quality 442 ct Type II diamond, one of the world’s largest gem quality diamonds to be recovered this year.
The company noted in a trading statement published in July that the mine had produced about 43 275 ct of diamonds in the first half of this year.
A small diamond miner that has dug some of the world’s most valuable gems from a mountainous African kingdom has found another huge stone.
Gem Diamonds Ltd. said Friday it had an unearthed a 442-carat diamond at its Letseng mine in Lesotho. While it’s hard to establish a price for such stones before cutters can evaluate them, it could sell for as much as $18 million, Edward Sterck, analyst at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note.
Given the rarity of such large stones, demand for big diamonds has traditionally been resilient, even at times when the wider industry has struggled.
The Letseng mine is famous for the size and quality of the diamonds it produces and has the highest average selling price in the world. Two years ago Gem Diamonds found a 910-carat stone, the size of two golf balls, that sold for $40 million.
The find comes as the global diamond industry has been brought to its knees by the pandemic. Jewelry stores have closed and India’s cutting industry, which handles almost all of the world’s stones, has come to a halt. The miners that dominate the industry, De Beers and Russian rival Alrosa PJSC, have seen their rough diamond sales collapse.
“The recovery of this remarkable 442 carat diamond, one of the world’s largest gem quality diamonds to be recovered this year, is further confirmation of the caliber of the Letseng mine and its ability to consistently produce large, high quality diamonds,” Clifford Elphick, Gem’s chief executive officer, said in the statement.
Gem Diamonds has recovered a number of large, high-quality stones at its Letšeng mine in Lesotho, all found in the first week after production resumed following the COVID-19 lockdown.
They include a 60-carat, light-yellow, type I diamond, and three D-color, white, type II diamonds weighing 87, 66 and 23 carats, the company said Monday. It also found several diamonds over 10.8 carats.
Between February and March, the miner unearthed four white diamonds weighing 88, 56, 53 and 33 carats. It has also retrieved two diamonds over 100 carats so far this year, and a 13.33-carat pink.
Gem Diamonds restarted production at Letšeng last week after the government allowed the mining sector to reopen following an extended shutdown. Lesotho remains on lockdown until May 5.
