Podcast: The Giant Diamond

The discovery of the world’s second-largest rough has the potential to boost the natural-diamond industry and Botswana as a nation, says Lucara Diamond Corp. CEO William Lamb. 

The mining executive joined Rapaport’s Joshua Freedman on the latest episode of the Rapaport Diamond Podcast, published just over two weeks after Lucara extracted a 2,492-carat stone at its Karowe mine in the southern African country. 

“Let’s bring more people in so that they can actually understand what a natural diamond represents, what it means for Botswana, how this stone…was brought into the light,” Lamb commented. “A lot of people don’t understand that a rough diamond has a tumultuous task of getting to surface. It travels between 200 and 500 kilometers in a magma tube at 1,000 degrees Celsius to get to surface. It is a phenomenon that we can…even recover these stones without them being destroyed.”

The diamond is the largest since the famous 3,106-carat Cullinan rough, discovered in South Africa in 1905, which ended up as polished in the British crown jewels. 

Lamb noted that cutting the as-yet-unnamed stone was not the only option. In 2016, Lucara attempted to sell the 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona in its rough form at a Sotheby’s auction, aiming to preserve the value of polished inventory in the market, but it failed to sell. 

Lamb also described the process by which technology helped unearth the stone unbroken, and revealed that there would be an in-country naming competition for the diamond. He also addressed the current state of the large-stone market and Lucara’s sales strategy. 

Listen to the podcast here: 

This podcast is brought to you by GIA — the Gemological Institute of America — protecting consumers and supporting the global gem and jewelry trade since 1931 through research, education, and laboratory services.