Last bids for Argyle’s coloured diamonds

Demand for high-end diamonds that can fetch more than $1 million per carat has remained strong even through the upheaval of the past year.

Michelle Sherring with an Argyle Eclipse diamond. Picture: Colin Murty

The global pandemic will be no match for the pulling power of the final ever tender of pink stones to come out of the now-shuttered Argyle diamond mine in Western Australia.

Mining giant Rio Tinto on Tuesday unveiled its final ever tender of premium pink, red and blue stones from Argyle, which closed at the end of last year.

Argyle was the most prolific source of pink diamonds in the world, and prices for the gems have been soaring steadily in the years leading up to the mine’s closure.

The 38th and final tender is also expected to be one of the most valuable. Included in the final sale is an especially rare red diamond – one of only 34 such coloured stones to have ever made it into an Argyle tender – as well as 41 blue and violet diamonds. Only around 2 per cent of the Argyle diamonds are blue.

Rio Tinto Minerals chief executive Sinead Kaufman told The Australian the company expected the diamonds to attract a higher premium than previous years.

“The quality of the stones this year is better than we’ve seen in a while, and for those that value pink diamonds and want to own a unique piece of history, this is the last year,” she said.

“We’ve already seen intense interest internationally.”

The diamonds – the best of which can fetch prices of more than $1m a carat – will be displayed at viewings in Perth, Sydney, Antwerp and Singapore before bids close on September 1.

Ms Kaufman said demand for high-end diamonds has remained strong even through the upheaval of the past year.

“The pink diamonds have always been almost counter-cyclical in some ways. They’ve really withstood the economic ups and downs in the past and have continued to grow,” she said.

“We’ve seen double-digit growth in the past year in the value of the stones, we’ve seen a 600 per cent increase in price since 2000, and we would expect that to continue long after the mine is gone.”

Of the 865 million carats of diamonds to come out of Argyle since its discovery in Western Australia’s Kimberley region in 1979, less than 1,900 carats of pink polished diamonds have been sold in the mine’s annual tenders.