Stellar Diamonds (LON:STEL) has recovered more large, high quality stones from its trial mining operation at Baoule in Guinea.
Latest mining has seen diamonds of between 12.6 carat and 10.0 carats, the company said. So far a total of 5,087 carats has been unearthed at the mine at an average grade of 13.5 cpht.
The breakdown was 382 diamonds of more than 1 carat, 115 diamonds over 2 carats, and 21 diamonds greater than 5 carats.
Last month, Stellar sold 733 gem quality carats from Baoulé at an average value of $266 per carat as part of a larger sale. One 5.5 cpht diamond sold for more than US$25,000.
Karl Smithson, chief executive, said: "Good progress continues to be made from trial mining at Baoulé.
“Our objective is to produce 15,000 carats from this exercise to enable us to determine the grade, value and presence of large stones in the pipe, with a view to using this information to consider a decision to advance Baoulé to commercial scale mining.“