Gold and diamonds venture BDI Mining has sold gems from its Cempaka mine in Indonesia for £790,000.

AIM-quoted BDI sold 4,528.73 carats of gem diamonds at its latest tender in Antwerp at an average price of $308 a carat. That is somewhat lower than the average $332-a-carat realised for the entire 16,773 carats sold by the company since it started to ship diamonds from Cempaka in August, realising some £3.2 million.

Run by chairman Paul Loudon and chief executive Lee Spencer, BDI's strategy is to use cashflow from Cempaka to develop its gold project at Woodlark Island in Papua New Guinea. The company recently announced a 75 per cent increase in measured, indicated and inferred resources at Woodlark Island to 655,000 oz of gold and has set itself the target of establishing a resource of between one and two million oz there by the end of 2006.