Image credit: Petra Diamonds
The group’s February tender saw pricing on a like-for-like basis up marginally in comparison to prices achieved in the first half of the fiscal year 2020, reflecting stable market conditions before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold globally.
Petra said it also experienced depressed and opportunistic bidding for its diamonds at its fifth sales cycle of the fiscal year 2020, particularly in the larger size, better quality and higher value categories.
It chose to only sell a portion of its South African goods, representing about 75% by volume and about 50% by value.
The remaining goods were exported to Antwerp and of these, about 75% were subsequently sold.
The Antwerp tender raked in $6.3 million with rough diamond prices for the combined March and April tenders down about 27% compared to February 2020 prices.
Meanwhile, Petra said its third quarter production rose 1% to 932,456 carats compared to 924,228 carats recorded during the same period in 2019.
The marginal increase was recorded despite the COVID-19 lockdown measures implemented in South Africa from 23 March 2020.
It said due to ongoing uncertainty around the impact of COVID-19, production guidance for the fiscal year 2020 remains suspended.
“Our operations continued their strong H1 performance into Q3, in large part due to the delivery of throughput benefits further to the positive implementation of Project 2022, prior to the disruptions caused by the outbreak of COVID-19,” said Petra chief executive Richard Duffy.
“We continued to prioritise the safety and health of our workforce in implementing prescribed COVID-19 measures as we moved the South African mines to operating at 50% of our workforce and will continue to carefully manage the increase towards full production over time.”
Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished
