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“Blue diamonds are so rare that there are no official statistics on their recovery.”
Petra Diamonds has discovered a 29.6 carat blue diamond in a South African mine. Image: www.petradiamonds.com.
JOHANNESBURG – A South African diamond producer announced Wednesday that it had found five blue stones, considered among the rarest and most valuable in the world, in its main mine.
Petra Diamonds Limited said the Type IIb gems were discovered within a week of production at its Cullinan mine, about 40 kilometers east of Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa.
The five stones are individual, as opposed to originally being part of a larger diamond, and their sizes range from 9.61 to 25.75 carats.
“Blue diamonds are so rare that there are no official statistics on their recovery,” Petra said in a statement, noting that it was “unusual” to find “five high-quality stones around the same time.”
The Cullinan mine is one of the most important sources of blue diamonds in the world, according to the company.
The last significant discovery was a 20.08-carat blue gem found on the site in September 2019, which was sold for $ 14.9 million to an anonymous buyer.
Petra said it was “maintaining a flexible approach to sales” for its latest find and “is still evaluating the optimal route to market for the stones.”
The group, which has three mines in South Africa and one in Tanzania, was battling debt and falling diamond prices even before the coronavirus shut down the global gem trade.
He cautioned that the five blue gems, while a “positive development”, “will not have a material impact on … the long-term solution needed to improve the group’s capital structure.”
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