📋 Tender Overview
The diamonds extracted from the Lulo mine, especially the rare or special ones, guarantee good revenues, despite the drop in the commercialization price to less than 57%.
According to the chairman of the Management Board (PCG) of Sociedade Mineira do Lulo, Domingos Machado, the diamonds from this deposit continue to be "quite attractive" and attract buyers from different world markets.
Speaking to the press on Thursday, during a visit by the governor of Lunda-Norte, Filomena Miza, to the aforementioned mine, the manager said that the average selling price of diamonds from the mine on the international market, at auction, is 1,850 Dollars per carat.
Without revealing the turnover levels for the first half of this year, the person in charge stressed that monthly production levels were below 2,500 carats compared to the expected 3,000.
He explained that the drop in production was due to the fact that the company was operating, during this period, at only 40 to 45% of its capacity, due to the constraints recorded during the rains, which flooded most of the blocks.
"We think that by October or November we will be able to recover the production levels that were predicted", said Domingos Machado.
The Lulo mine, located in the municipality of Capenda-Camulemba, province of Lunda-Norte, has shown high potential in terms of quality and quantity, having achieved the highest value per carat in the entire world in the first year of exploration, in the order of 2,985 dollars.
Since the mine began operations in 2010, 45 diamonds weighing more than 100 carats have been extracted, five of which this year.
Lulo is also the mine where the largest diamond ever found in Angola was extracted, weighing 404.2 carats, sold in May 2016 for 16 million dollars and which went on to yield USD 34 million dollars after being cut and transformed into jewelry.
With a concession of 3,000 square kilometres, the mine, owned by Angolan companies Endiama EP (32%) and Rosas & Pétalas (28%), as well as by Australian Lucapa Diamond (40%), currently provides 700 direct and indirect jobs.
