Australia's Lucapa Diamond (ASX:LOM) has found a 25-carat yellow gem diamond at its 70%-owned Mothae mine in Lesotho, adding that the stone was recovered during the first two days of trial processing at the project.
The yellow diamond was unearthed from the Neck zone of the Mothae kimberlite, which is not part of the current 1 million carat Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant (JORC) resource, the company said.
Trial processing kicked-off after efficiency and security modifications, with 50,000 tonnes of bulk samples from the Neck, North and South East zones of the project stockpiled in readiness for processing.
Together with the coloured stone, trial processing has also unearthed numerous other diamonds in excess of 5 carats from the Neck zone, Lucapa said.
It's been a good year for Lucapa so far, with the company fetching $1.7 million in March from selling findings from its prolific Lulo mine in Angola, which recently yielded a 46-carat pink stone, the largest coloured gem-quality rock ever recovered in Angola.
The Mothae project is located within 5 km of Gem Diamonds' (LON:GEMD) Let??eng mine, the world's highest dollar per carat kimberlite diamond operation, which in January yielded a 910-carat rock. It was the fifth biggest gem-quality diamond ever found.