A little over a year ago, Lucas Ntsipe promised his chief executive William Lamb that he would produce something special out of the Karowe mine in a remote part of Botswana.
On Monday morning, the 52-year-old assistant general manager of Canadian diamond miner Lucara delivered. “I got a call from one of my engineers, who said: ‘We have discovered something’,” said Ntsipe.
“I said: ‘You are crazy and you are not telling me the truth. Maybe it’s a broken bottle.’”
Ntsipe rushed to the sorting area where the chief sorter unveiled the discovery: the world’s second-largest, gem-quality diamond, weighing an astonishing 2,492-carats.
After touching the stone through the glovebox, Ntsipe broke the news to the local managing director Naseem Lahri. “The eagle has landed,” he shouted down the phone. “This eagle is big and this eagle has landed.” Lahri then passed on the message to Lamb.
The story stretches as far back as the moon landings in 1969, when Neil Armstrong uttered the same phrase. In that same year, the AK6 kimberlite, a pipelike body of igneous rock, rich in diamonds and formed through volcanic eruptions, was discovered in northeastern Botswana by De Beers, the world’s largest diamond miner.
However, the deposit’s potential was not recognised by De Beers, the industry’s then monopolistic force, which deemed it to be too small and low quality.
Reassessment began in 2003 with De Beers eventually selling a majority stake in the AK6 diamond project — later known as the Karowe mine — to Lucara in 2009 for $49mn.
“When the company did the analysis, it didn’t assume [it would make] any big discoveries,” said Adam Lundin, son of Lukas Lundin, one of the late founders of Lucara. “But what has been found is super special.”
Lucara subsequently bought out the minority partner and invested $120mn to develop an open-pit mine and processing facility, which started production in 2012.
“We had an understanding of the potential that the resource had,” said Lamb, who was Lucara’s managing director and CEO for a decade. He came back last year after Eira Thomas’s five-year leadership was overshadowed by a budget that had ballooned because of a $683mn underground expansion of Karowe.
Three years after production began, a miner unearthed the Lesedi La Rona, a precious, white 1,109-carat gem that fetched $53mn — more than what Lucara had paid for the De Beers stake.
The Lesedi La Rona could have fetched even more, however. The gem was only found after being put through the mine’s mill, involving falls of 5 metres, and through crushers that put the fragile material under enormous pressure.
When retrieved, another 374-carat gem was found that fitted like a jigsaw piece into the Lesedi La Rona, suggesting the original diamond had been cleft apart.
“Lesedi was probably over 2,000 carats before it hit the processing plant,” Lamb told the Financial Times.
The mis-step led Lucara to install X-ray transmission technology, at a cost of $17mn in its recovery facility. The technology works by recognising and separating the precious stones by their atomic density, enabling miners to catch bumper gemstones before they are put in harm’s way.
The installation looks prescient: people close to Lucara estimate the new stone’s value at above $40mn. Some industry veterans predict it could be above $60mn.
The stone is the biggest gemstone-quality find since the Cullinan diamond was discovered 120 years ago in South Africa. That was soon afterwards cut up and used in the British Crown Jewels.
The find could transform the diamond sector and raise the global profile of Botswana — the world’s leading producer — by rekindling the magic, intrigue and wonder that led diamonds to take centre stage in the luxury world in the 20th century.
That taste for mined stones has been conspicuously muted over the past decade as competition from lab-grown stones and, more recently, depressed luxury spending have undercut the $83bn diamond jewellery sector.
“It couldn’t be a better time to bring attention to the diamond market,” said Lamb. “This needs to be used to drive interest.”
For now, the stone is being stored in a high-security facility in Gaborone’s diamond technology park, monitored 24/7 by the police and military. “We have excessive security,” Lamb added.
The Gemological Institute of America in Botswana lacks equipment big enough to analyse the stone’s properties, making it uncertain where the diamond will go next. Lamb said diamantaires — craftsmen responsible for cutting, polishing and transforming a rough diamond — with conventional equipment for analysis can only see 2cm into the diamond, which measures 11cm x 6cm x 6.5cm and weighs 500g.
Sales inquiries were already pouring in, said Lamb, with one suggesting their champagne matches the colour of the stone. Lucara would explore luxury brands, museums, collectors and royal families as potential buyers, the chief executive said.
Graff, the British luxury house which bought the Lesedi La Rona — meaning “our light” in Setswana, the most widely spoken language in Botswana — leveraged the stone to create perfumes named after the gem.
One decision will be what to name the gemstone. It will most likely be chosen through a national competition in Botswana, as Lucara did in 2019 with another discovery, the 1,758-carat Sewelô. The name means “rare find” and was proposed by Gofaone Tlhabuswe, a resident of Gabane village, who won $3,000.
Botswana’s diamond industry has been a poster child for how resource extraction can benefit local economies, making up 80 per cent of exports and a third of fiscal revenues while avoiding the corruption and mismanagement often dubbed the “resource curse”.
“Botswana has shown that, with clear leadership and a spirit of partnership between government and industry, it’s possible to convert a country’s natural resources wealth into social and economic progress for citizens,” said Rohitesh Dhawan, chief executive of ICMM, the global trade body for mining.
Ntsipe, who used to walk 7km to school and whose scholarship to Canada was funded by the industry, hopes the find will go some way towards diamonds regaining some sparkle.
“I know the kids out there are going to benefit from the proceeds,” he said, adding that “it shows people there is a story to tell around diamonds”.
