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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score was a mediocre 63-84-163 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell eight points to 674. Dr. William Lamb and Adam Lundin's Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC) crashed to an intraday low of 23 cents, ending the day down nine cents to 25 cents on 2.05 million shares following a tough first quarter mining, recovering and selling diamonds from Karowe in Botswana.

A tough quarter had been expected -- but not as bad as this -- and several more tough quarters will come and go before the big underground expansion of Karowe is complete and production begins in early 2028. The company mined barely 390,000 tonnes of kimberlite during the quarter, but it augmented that rock with stockpiled material so that the mine processed over 676,000 tonnes. At an average grade of 13.4 carats per hundred tonnes, Lucara recovered 90,500 carats during the quarter.

The carat crop was in line with earlier quarters: Lucara mined just 81,611 carats in the first quarter of 2024 and averaged about 93,300 carats over the rest of the year. The problem came from the sales side, as the company sold just 72,871 carats during the latest quarter, down from 93,560 a year earlier. With the diamonds selling for just $30.3-million (U.S.), Karowe averaged $415 (U.S.) per carat in the latest quarter, while a year ago it managed $422 (U.S.) per carat.

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