LUCAPA Diamond Company said it had secured a R100m debt facility from South Africa’s government-owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC). The loan will be used for the repayment of existing debt and the two-phase build of Mothae, a brownfields mining development, situated in Lesotho.
“The IDC’s support for the new Mothae mine, coupled with the significant investment being made by our partner Lucapa, underlines Lesotho’s reputation as having the world’s highest average $ per carat diamond production,” said Lesotho’s mines minister, Keketso Sello.
The facility is for a period of four years and includes a 12-month moratorium on capital repayments, the company said.
The financing agreement with IDC comes as the commissioning phase commences at the 1.1 million tonnes a year Mothae diamond plant, with first commercial diamond recoveries scheduled for early November 2018.
Lucapa bought a 70% stake in Mothae via a government tender for $9m in January 2017 – a position it increased to 80% with the Lesotho government holding the balance of shares. Some $36m has been previously spent in trial mining of Mothae in which more than 23,000 carats of diamonds has been recovered.
“Mothae is located within 5km of the Letšeng mine, which produces the highest average dollar per carat kimberlite diamond production in the world,” said the company in 2017.
Lucapa already mines diamonds from Lulo, an alluvial diamond mine in Angola which has a reputation for high value rocks, including a 404 carat stone recovered last year for which Lucapa was paid $16m.
