Second largest diamond ever found

Published 23 August 2024 at 09.14

Foreign. The Swedish Lundin family's mining company Lucara Diamond has announced that they have found the second largest diamond ever discovered on Earth. According to a statement on the company's website, the exceptional gemstone weighs a whopping 2,492 carats.

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The diamond was found in the Karowe mine in Botswana, a mine already known for its big finds.

The incident caused the company to rush by 60 percent on the stock market on Thursday.

The stone was discovered using the company's advanced so-called XRT technology, which has been used since 2017 to identify and preserve large, valuable diamonds.

– We are ecstatic to have recovered this extraordinary 2,492 carat diamond. This discovery demonstrates not only the remarkable potential of the Karowe mine, but also the value of our strategic investment in cutting-edge XRT technology. The ability to recover such a massive, high-quality stone intact demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach to diamond recovery, Lucara CEO William Lamb said in a press release.

This is not the first time Lucara has made a major find in the same mine. Previously, the company also mined the 1,758-carat Sewelo diamond in 2019 and the 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona in 2015.

However, the record for the largest diamond ever found is still held by the 3,106-carat Cullinandia diamond, which discovered in 1905 in South Africa. That diamond was later split into over 100 smaller stones, including the 530.5 carat Cullinan I, which is the world's largest cut diamond. The latter is now mounted on Edward VII's sceptre, The Scepter of the Cross, which is part of the British royal regalia.