Lucapa Diamond Company released its activity update for the quarter ended December 31. 2015 reporting record quarterly gross diamond revenues of A$ 8.1mn and a record quarterly average selling price of A$ 2,141 per carat for diamonds sourced from its Lulo mine in Angola.

The Company said that it had conducted three diamond sales during the quarter and that processing rates had increased by 173% to 82,410 bulk cubic metres per month during the second half of the calendar year 2015.

As earlier reported, during the quarter the Company found a new source of diamonds at Mining Block 6 and recently recovered a 133.4 ct rough diamond there, the largest recovered since work commenced on the project.

Since the inception of work in November 2014, a total of 10,372 cts have been recovered at an average selling price of A$ 1,855 per carat.

In the alluvial mining activity, the Company reported that 28 specials were recovered with the two bigggest diamonds being 74.5 and 66.3 carats.

By the end of the quarter, the Company identified the high priority areas for its mining activity and had purchased new mining quipment and an earth moving fleet which would be operational by February 2016. It has targeted achieving a mining rate of 20,000 bulk cubic metres per month.

Lucapa has also created its maiden JORC compliant resource estimate which calculated an inferred resource sufficient to support allivial mining for four years at 20,000 bcm/ month.

During the quarter, Lucapa was also awarded a 3 year prospecting licence in Botswana near the Orapa mine.