Mothae Diamond Fetches $37K/ct.

RAPAPORT... Lucapa Diamond Company garnered $3.8 million from the saleof rough stones from its Mothae mine in Lesotho, with one stone going for $36,664 per carat. The miner sold 5,411 carats at tender in Antwerp, its first commercialsale of diamonds from the deposit. It recovered the stones in the fourthquarter of 2018, during the plant's ramp-up phase and in the first month ofcommercial mining in January, the miner said Wednesday. Lucapa achieved anoverall average price of $707 per carat at the sale. "The solid bidding we witnessed in Antwerp for this firstcommercial parcel has certainly marked Mothae's arrival on the internationalscene as a producer of top-quality goods, complementing those from our Lulomine," Lucapa CEO Stephen Wetherall said. The company plans to focus its attention on progressingexploration at Mothae and at its Lulo mine in Angola to maximize shareholdervalue, it said. It will prioritize those projects over the Brooking deposit inAustralia and its Orapa site in Botswana. Lucapa will publish the 2019 forecast for Mothae in thesecond quarter, after it reviews the results of its first quarter of commercialmining operations, it said. Image: Diamonds sold at the Mothae tender in Antwerp. (Lucapa Diamond Company)