Showing posts with label Canadian yellow diamonds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canadian yellow diamonds. Show all posts

Monday 20 March 2023

Significant Potential at Ekati, say New Owners

Vivid yellow rough diamond

Vivid yellow rough diamond

Burgundy’s $136m deal to buy the Ekati diamond mine, in Canada, is likely to extend its life “significantly”, says Kim Truter, the company’s CEO.

The purchase, announced last week, from Arctic Canadian, should be concluded next month, pending financing and shareholders’ approval.

“The real advantage is it’s a tier-one asset in a tier-one country,” Truter told CBC News, Canada’s publicly owned news and information service.

He said he saw untapped potential at Ekati, which opened in 1998 as Canada’s first diamond mine.

Ekati is particularly attractive to Australia-base Burgundy because of the fancy yellow stones it produces, such as the 71.26-carat octahedron diamond recovered last September (pictured), believed to be the largest fancy vivid yellow gemstone discovered in Canada.

New owner Burgundy has a keen interest in yellow diamonds. It is currently reviving the Ellendale mine, Western Australia, once the world’s largest producer of fancy yellow diamonds, and has established its own dedicated cut and polish facility in Perth, also in Western Australia.

Burgundy is buying Ekati from Arctic Canadian Diamond Company, which acquired it in February 2021 after the previous owners, Dominion Diamonds, filed for insolvency.

Source: IDEX Online

Thursday 1 September 2022

151 ct Yellow diamond recovered at Canada’s Arctic Circle


151 ct Yellow diamond

oronto-listed Mountain Province Diamonds will next week put on sale an “exceptional” coloured rough diamond, which it recovered from the Gahcho Kué mine, in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

The diamond, a 151.60 t octahedron of exceptional clarity, will be offered for sale alongside a selection of more than 90 individual special rough diamonds recovered from the company’s Canadian diamond mine.

The upcoming sale represents the biggest offering of +10.8 ct gem quality diamonds offered by the company to date.

“This important diamond represents a clear example of the Gahcho Kué mine’s ability to consistently recover high-quality gems of exceptionally large size. These gems are highly coveted by collectors around the globe not only for their beauty but increasingly, for their Canadian origin,” commented VP for diamond marketing Reid Mackie.

Source: DCLA

Thursday 21 May 2020

Study yields new insight in hunt for rare, valuable yellow diamonds


A new study by University of Alberta scientists could help guide the search for rare, high-value yellow diamonds in the Canadian North.
The researchers, led by PhD student Mei Yan Lai, examined the chemical makeup of stones recovered from the Chidliak and Ekati mines in Northern Canada to get a better understanding of how they formed.
“Without this research, we wouldn’t know that two separate formation events occurred, and that the second, more recent event is responsible for the yellow colour,” explained U of A diamond geologist Thomas Stachel.
“The more we know about the origin of these potentially high-value diamonds, the better results for diamond exploration and value creation in Northern Canada.”
Lai said they wanted to understand the origin of the yellow colour in the diamonds from the two deposits.
“Canadian yellow diamonds have never been studied spectroscopically in detail. Our results suggest that the cause is the preservation of unstable single nitrogen atoms preserved inside the diamonds,” explained Lai, who conducted this research as part of her master’s studies in the Diamond Exploration Research Training School under the supervision of Stachel.
The research team determined that some yellow diamonds contain colourless cores, meaning that the yellow outer layers crystallized on top of clearer centres. Lai determined that the yellow diamonds crystallized no more than 30,000 years before the kimberlite eruptions that brought them up to Earth’s surface.
“Our analysis shows that the colourless cores in these yellow diamonds are about one billion years older,” Lai said. “In fact, the carbon isotope compositions and nitrogen concentrations of the colourless cores and yellow outer layers are significantly different, suggesting that they formed in at least two distinct events and involved different diamond-forming fluids.”
The researchers said discovering a potential new source of yellow diamonds in the Canadian North is economically significant, as the previous main source of high-quality yellow diamonds, the Ellendale Mine in Western Australia, was recently shut down.
The discovery of colourless cores in some of the yellow diamonds may also be of interest to the jewelry trade, said Lai.
“Occasionally, rough yellow diamonds lose their vibrant yellow colour after being cut and polished—probably because this kind of diamond has a thin layer of yellow overgrowth on top of the geologically older colourless core,” she said.
The project is a collaboration with Dominion Diamond Mines and Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. Part of the analyses were done at the Gemological Institute of America.
The research is supported by a bursary through DERTS, funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Collaborative Research and Training Experience program.
The study, “Yellow Diamonds With Colourless Cores—Evidence for Episodic Diamond Growth Beneath Chidliak and the Ekati Mine, Canada,” was published in Mineralogy and Petrology.
Source: DCLA

Study yields new insight in hunt for rare, valuable yellow diamonds


A new study by University of Alberta scientists could help guide the search for rare, high-value yellow diamonds in the Canadian North.
The researchers, led by PhD student Mei Yan Lai, examined the chemical makeup of stones recovered from the Chidliak and Ekati mines in Northern Canada to get a better understanding of how they formed.
“Without this research, we wouldn’t know that two separate formation events occurred, and that the second, more recent event is responsible for the yellow colour,” explained U of A diamond geologist Thomas Stachel.
“The more we know about the origin of these potentially high-value diamonds, the better results for diamond exploration and value creation in Northern Canada.”
Lai said they wanted to understand the origin of the yellow colour in the diamonds from the two deposits.
“Canadian yellow diamonds have never been studied spectroscopically in detail. Our results suggest that the cause is the preservation of unstable single nitrogen atoms preserved inside the diamonds,” explained Lai, who conducted this research as part of her master’s studies in the Diamond Exploration Research Training School under the supervision of Stachel.
The research team determined that some yellow diamonds contain colourless cores, meaning that the yellow outer layers crystallized on top of clearer centres. Lai determined that the yellow diamonds crystallized no more than 30,000 years before the kimberlite eruptions that brought them up to Earth’s surface.
“Our analysis shows that the colourless cores in these yellow diamonds are about one billion years older,” Lai said. “In fact, the carbon isotope compositions and nitrogen concentrations of the colourless cores and yellow outer layers are significantly different, suggesting that they formed in at least two distinct events and involved different diamond-forming fluids.”
The researchers said discovering a potential new source of yellow diamonds in the Canadian North is economically significant, as the previous main source of high-quality yellow diamonds, the Ellendale Mine in Western Australia, was recently shut down.
The discovery of colourless cores in some of the yellow diamonds may also be of interest to the jewelry trade, said Lai.
“Occasionally, rough yellow diamonds lose their vibrant yellow colour after being cut and polished—probably because this kind of diamond has a thin layer of yellow overgrowth on top of the geologically older colourless core,” she said.
The project is a collaboration with Dominion Diamond Mines and Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. Part of the analyses were done at the Gemological Institute of America.
The research is supported by a bursary through DERTS, funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Collaborative Research and Training Experience program.
The study, “Yellow Diamonds With Colourless Cores—Evidence for Episodic Diamond Growth Beneath Chidliak and the Ekati Mine, Canada,” was published in Mineralogy and Petrology.
Source: DCLA

IDEX Price Report for 1 May: Prices Show Signs of Stabilizing

A diamond held by dop is polished on rotating automatic cast iron lap Prices showed signs of stabilizing during April, with an even mix of i...