British diamond miner sells 12.47 carat blue diamond

British junior miner Gem Diamonds with operations in Botswana and Lesotho has sold a rare 12.47 carat blue diamond and an 82 carat exceptional quality white diamond from its Letseng mine in Lesotho. Gem Diamonds said in a statement on Friday that the 12.47 carat blue diamond fetched a record price for the Letseng mine of 603, 047 U.S. dollars per carat, a total of 7.5 million dollars. "Letseng continues to achieve such outstanding prices for its exceptional diamonds and we continue to expect recovery of such high quality diamonds as mining at Letseng continues to focus more on the higher grade, higher value Satellite pipe towards the end of 2013 and into 2014," said Gem Diamonds CEO, Clifford Elphick. Elphick said the 82 carat white diamond fetched 59,173 dollars per carat, a total of 4.8 million dollars. And the recovery of the two diamonds was announced at end of September. He said the Letseng mine is famous for the production of large, top color, exceptional white diamonds, making it the highest dollar per carat kimberlite diamond mine in the world. Since Gem Diamonds' acquisition of Letseng in 2006, the mine has produced four of the top 20 largest white gem quality diamonds recorded. Earlier this year, Gem Diamonds announced that it expects to reap more revenue compared to the last year's financial performance which was impacted by substantially lower realized diamond price. In 2012, the company recorded revenue of 202 million dollars compared to 306 million dollars in 2011, despite the flagship mine Letseng registering a second successive record carat production of 114,350 carats, an increase of 2 percent from the record production of 2011.