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Prices Improve at Stornoway Rough Tender

January 30, 2018  |  Rapaport News

RAPAPORT… Rough prices rose at Stornoway Diamond Corporation’s first
sale of 2018 as the market improved and the company sold higher-quality production
from its Renard mine.

Last week’s tender in Antwerp achieved an average price of
$104 per carat, Stornoway’s highest price to date, the miner reported Monday. Some
larger diamonds fetched $140 per carat, while 24 stones above 10.8 carats went
for an average of $3,210 per carat.

The improvement from an average of $85 per carat for 2017
reflected a strengthening diamond sector at the beginning of the year, the
company noted. In addition, there were fewer diamond breakages during the
production process, which had affected prices at earlier tenders, while the mix
of diamond sizes and qualities was also more favorable.

In total, the miner sold 138,687 carats for $14.4 million at
the tender. A record 132 out of 190 attendees put in bids for goods, with each
parcel receiving an average of 18.5 bids.

Stornoway missed its production and sales forecasts in 2017,
the first full year of production at the Renard project in Canada. The miner recovered
1.64 million carats of rough during the year, compared with its projected 1.69
million, while challenging market conditions and lower-than-expected diamond
quality and size dented prices. The company expects production to drop to 1.6
million carats this year.

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