Australia’s diamond industry faces an unlikely future as the company behind one of the few remaining projects in the country announces it has gone into voluntary administration.
The company that owns the Merlin diamond mine in the Northern Territory on Friday said administrators were now in control of operations.
In 2021, the ASX-listed Lucapa Diamond Company took over the Merlin project, 720 kilometres south-east of Darwin, but was yet to resume production.
While the Merlin site is famous for producing Australia’s largest rough diamond, operators have not produced commercial quantities for more than 20 years.
Australian diamonds flail
There are no operating commercial diamond mines in Australia, veteran diamond specialist John Chapman says.
