CaratNinety-five percent sold in Luanda, and Sodiam beats its book by 23%
TAGS cleared 95% of a Luanda tender of goods above 10.8 carats and called trading near normal. Sodiam's seventeenth auction took about $21.7 million net from 6,586.89 carats, 23.46% above expected value.
§1Ninety-five out of a hundred.
Angola's rough is finding buyers, and at prices its own sellers did not forecast. Trans Atlantic Gem Sales, the Dubai tender house that markets Angolan production alongside the state trader Sodiam, closed a Luanda sale of goods above 10.8 carats with a 95% sell-through and described the result as a "return to near normal trading." In a year when nearly every rough seller has cut prices, withdrawn goods or done both, a 95% clearance is worth writing down.
The state channel says the same thing with more detail. Sodiam took approximately $21.7 million net from its seventeenth rough auction, selling 6,586.89 carats and beating its own expected value by 23.46%. Twenty-seven of the thirty-four houses invited put in bids; viewing ran at Sodiam's Luanda premises from 22 to 25 June and electronic bidding closed on the morning of 26 June. An auction that lands nearly a quarter above the reserve book is not the behaviour of a market in retreat.
§2Size, not geography.
The split is by size, not by geography. In the same soft market, Petra's fourth-quarter revenue fell 44% to $38 million on weak tender prices and small goods, and De Beers' average price dropped 32% to $105 a carat. Gem Diamonds, selling Letseng's large Type IIa material, lifted its average about 17% to roughly $1,501 a carat. Angolan tenders are built around exactly that end of the size curve, which is why they read as strength while the near-commercial book stays under water.
An auction that lands nearly a quarter above the reserve book is not the behaviour of a market in retreat.
§3Both sides of the table.
Angola intends to sell more of it. Endiama, the state mining company, has set out an expansion programme, and its commercial director Elton Escrivão has been making the case for the country as a growth source rather than a legacy one. The government is also a member of the Global Diamond Consortium bidding for De Beers, which would put Angola on both sides of the rough market at once: producing the goods and owning a share of the channel that prices them.
Two Luanda results do not turn a market, and the 95% figure covers only the top of the size range, where money has been comfortable all year. But the direction is useful. Buyers are paying up for stones that cannot be replaced by a factory and walking away from the ones that can, and Angola happens to sit on the right side of that line. For a cutter, the read is simple:
the scarcity premium is real above ten carats and still absent below one.
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