Drag to turn the globe

Mines/Angola

Catoca mine

Catoca mine, Angola. Producing, mining diamonds since 1996.

Why Catoca is famous

Catoca is a kimberlite diamond mine in Lunda Sul Province, Angola. It accounts for more than 80 per cent of the country's diamond output. USGS gives a capacity of about 8 million carats a year and output of 6.49 million carats in 2020. Wikidata dates the mine to 1996.1,2

Story cards

Timeline

  1. Signed at Interlaken in late 2002; in force 2003Kimberley Process Certification Scheme comes into force3

What kind of deposit

Kimberlite and lamproite pipe

Catoca today

Mining in Angola

Where next

Mines

An example ofJagersfontein diamond mineCatoca makes over 80 per cent of Angola's diamonds. Jagersfontein is a Free State open pit.1

Events

ExamplesKimberley Process Certification Scheme comes into forceCatoca alone makes over 80 per cent of Angola's diamond output.1

Deposit types

An example ofKimberlite and lamproite pipeCatoca belongs to the kimberlite and lamproite pipe family of deposits.4

Sources

  1. 2020-21 Minerals Yearbook, Angola (advance release) US Geological Survey
  2. Catoca diamond mine (Q1051235) Wikidata
  3. What is the Kimberley Process?
  4. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

Keep exploring

Stories with these minerals

The world runs on rockThe BatteryInside a lithium-ion cellThe Big Hole at Kimberley, South Africa, seen from above, with water at the bottomMining historyThe Big Hole, KimberleyDiamonds · South AfricaThe world runs on rockThe ChipThe minerals inside every computer chipGold drill-hole columns rising over the Yilgarn goldfields on a satellite map of Western AustraliaData storyUnder Western AustraliaDrill holes · Western Australia

All mining storiesThe world runs on rockAll mineralsMining by country

Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: The Big Hole by Rudolph Botha, CC BY-SA 3.0.