Bruce Whitfield:
Certainly lots of excitement in Lesotho over the last couple of weeks, the Chief Executive of the Gem Diamond Company, Clifford Elphick will surely lay claim to the title of diamond geezer. The discovery of 603 carat white diamond in Lesotho, the biggest diamond found in the past 13 years, but only a fraction of the size of the worlds biggest Cullinan diamond, which is over 3000 carats. But Clifford, it must be a remarkable experience having had this thing come out of the ground and actually be able to handle it?

Clifford Elphick:
Yes we have been extremely fortunate and it was an amazing feeling to drive down into the sort house and pick up this fantastic jewel.

Bruce Whitfield:
How does it work? Does a guy with a pick and a shovel at the rock face dig it out, suddenly pick it up and go, hey guys, I found a big one?

Clifford Elphick:
No, not quite like that, we blast the rock, load it onto big dump trucks, which take it to the plant and then the rocks get crushed, a DMS plant, a dense media separation plant where the diamonds and the kimberlite get separated, and finally through an X-ray sorting machine and they finally end up in a glove box and indeed, that is the first time that a human will actually see the diamond.

Bruce Whitfield:
Bang goes the romance then, but it is an exciting time. It is in Antwerp, it went on show today and at 603 carats, what is a diamond like that worth roughly?

Clifford Elphick:
I would like to put some pressure on the buyer, I think a figure of around $10-million is something that we are expecting it to achieve as the minimum, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is such a rare thing this, that it is going to be a case of this appealing to a particular buyer.

Bruce Whitfield:
It is a single diamond, it certainly will not be flawless, but it is apparently a very good quality.

Clifford Elphick:
Yes, it is a top quality, D colour and it is a type 2 diamond, the very best diamond, if you are technically minded. But it does have a couple of glitches, which are really cracks in it and so unfortunately, it won't polish into a single stone out of this 603 carats, it will polish into a number of stones, probably an 80 carat being the biggest, and maybe another 70, but still, significant, but the quality is of the very best.

Bruce Whitfield:
What does the quality of the size of this diamond tell you? Does it give you any indication about the other resources that might be lying in the ground at Letseng?

Clifford Elphick:
Letseng is well known as a mine that produces big stones. De Beers’ mine at Cullinan, also is known, it has a set of a signature producing big stones. So, certain mines do have that, it is just very gratifying that our hunch about this has been confirmed now. There was a 601 carat found in 1967 at Letseng, so this is the second one.

Bruce Whitfield:
There is also something of quite a delicious irony of this, you were once advisor to the Oppenheimers, De Beers actually shut down the Letseng mine in 1982 and now production has restarted and this is the first big discovery.

Clifford Elphick:
Yes, the reason that the mine was shut in 1982 by De Beers, the conditions were very different then. There was something of a slump in the diamond industry, so that was the reason then, but lucky for us that this happened.

Bruce Whitfield:
Clifford Elphick nice talking to you, thank you very much indeed, the Chief Executive of the Gem Diamond Company. Big celebrations and hoping to get $10-million for a single diamond.