World’s Second Largest Diamond Found in Botswana

 

 

A 2,492-carat diamond, the world’s second largest, has been discovered in Botswana, says the Canadian mining company that found the stone.

The diamond was discovered at the Karowe diamond mine in northeastern Botswana using X-ray technology, Lucara Diamond Corp said in a statement released Thursday.

Lucara did not give a value to the find or mention its quality. But in terms of carats, the stone is second only to the 3,016-carat Cullinan diamond discovered in South Africa in 1905.

“We are thrilled with the recovery of this extraordinary 2,492-carat diamond,” Lucara Chairman William Lamb said in the statement.

Images released by the company show that the diamond is as big as the palm of a hand.

It is “one of the largest rough diamonds ever discovered” and was detected using the company’s Mega Diamond Recovery X-ray technology, installed in 2017 to identify and preserve large, high-value diamonds, the statement said.

Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi saw the huge stone later Thursday. His government said it was the second largest in the world.

Tobias Kormind, chief executive of 77 Diamonds, Europe’s largest online diamond retailer, confirmed that it was the largest rough diamond discovered since the Cullinan diamond, parts of which adorn the British Crown Jewels.

“This discovery is largely due to newer technology that allows larger diamonds to be extracted from the ground without breaking them into pieces. So we’ll probably see more of them where they came from,” he said.

Botswana is one of the world’s largest producers of diamonds, its main source of income, which accounts for 30 percent of its gross domestic product and 80 percent of its exports.

Last month, the southern African country proposed a law that would require mining companies, once granted a license, to sell a 24 percent stake in their mines to local investors unless the government exercises its option to buy out the equity stake.

Before the discovery was announced on Thursday, the largest diamond discovered in Botswana was a 1,758-carat stone mined by Lucara at its Karowe mine in 2019 and named Sewelo.

In 2021, Lucara found a 1,174-carat diamond in Botswana using the same X-ray technology.

Source: Press agencies

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