Petra Diamonds Limited announces that it has recovered five Type IIb blue diamonds of high quality in terms of both their colour and clarity at the Cullinan mine in South Africa. The diamonds are also significant in terms of their size, being 25.75, 21.25, 17.57, 11.42 and 9.61 carats, and are assessed to be individual stones and not originally part of one larger diamond.
Blue diamonds are so rare that there are no official statistics on their recovery, however the Cullinan mine is known as the world’s most important source. The last blue diamond of significance was recovered a year ago at the mine in September 2019 and it is therefore even more unusual to recover five high quality stones around the same time, all in the space of one week’s production.
Given the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Company is maintaining a flexible approach to sales. It is therefore still evaluating the optimal route to market for the stones and the Company will release further information to its customer base on the marketing plan in due course.
South African Petra Diamonds put itself up for sale in June, and says that the discovery of the diamonds won’t help turn around its fortunes.