The company has recovered 138 stones greater than 1 carat and a number of gem diamonds of over 5 carats and up to 9.2 carats.

Stellar Diamonds plans to continue trial mining up to 200,000 tons of kimberlite over the coming year, to identify the large, high value stones in the pipe.

The processing plant is being operated at an average capacity of 50 tons per hour.

Stellar Diamonds CEO Karl Smithson said: "The regular occurrence of larger gem quality stones is highly encouraging, as is maintaining our target plant processing capacity and run of mine grade, in order to achieve our objective of processing 2,000 carats per month during 2015.

First diamonds of 941 carats were exported from Baoulé in December and second parcel of around 1,250 carats is planned to be shipped this month and will be added to the first parcel currently held in Antwerp for sale.

Stellar will also sell 3,700 carats, which have been recovered from various phases of bulk sampling.

The company plans to sell goods every two months during this year, to generate regular cash flow.