OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday
SOUTH African diamond producer De Beers Consolidated Mines is to press ahead with a new mine in Botswana, the BK kimberlites project, at a cost of 225m pula (US $45m), according to Debswana managing director Louis Nchindo.
The mine consists of four small pipes about 20km east of the Orapa mine in central Botswana just off the Francistown-Orapa road.
Debswana is a 50:50 partnership between De Beers and the Botswana government and has since its inception in 1969 sold all its output through De Beers’ Diamond Trading Company (DTC).
Debswana will start preparations for the mining of these pipes in January 2001.
The pipes are to be mined in two phases. The largest pipe – known as BK9 and which is expected to supply about 86% of the ore during the life of mine – and the smaller BK 12 are to be mined first, followed by BK15 and BK1.
The new mining initiative will create about 180 new jobs when operational, and will confirm Botswana as the world’s largest producer of diamonds with a combined annual output of more than 25 million carats.
Although previously identified, the pipes were not developed as they were small and marginal. However, with the recent expansion to the Orapa mine, water, power, and other infrastructure will be shared and enhance the economic viability of the project.
To further keep costs to a minimum, BK9 will use refurbished, redundant mining equipment not required by either Orapa or the Letlhakane mine, some 40km southeast of Orapa.
Construction will include a treatment plant able to handle 200 tons of ore per hour, and the first carats are expected in the last quarter of 2002.
The new mine will have its own slurry dam, but diamond-bearing concentrate will transported to Orapa for final recovery.
As diamonds mined at Orapa and Letlhakane, those from BK9 will also be sent for final sorting to the Jwaneng mine, near Gaborone in the southeast of Botswana.