Gaborone: De Beers said its third sightholder sale of the year has provisionally raked in $520 million compared with $586 million, a year earlier.

The company earned $563 million from its second sales cycle of 2018.

“While the second quarter of the year is traditionally a seasonally slower period, we continued to see good rough diamond demand in the third sales cycle of 2018 as diamond businesses have focused on restocking following healthy consumer demand for diamond jewellery in the US and China,” said De Beers chief executive Bruce Cleaver.