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De Beers wins mining rights for Venetia
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Wed, 06 Feb 2008
[miningmx.com] -- DIAMOND giant De Beers has been granted a new-order mining right for Venetia, its largest South African mine, adding to the other two rights it already holds, MD Gareth Penny said on Wednesday.
"We have received notification of new order rights granted for the Venetia mine, by far and away our biggest mine in South Africa," Penny said at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town.
"We've had notification we would receive the right on 21 March," he said. "We are very pleased about that. It gives us security of tenure and it's been a long process."
Voorspoed and Cullinan mines also have new order rights. Cullinan has been sold to Petra Diamonds as part of a massive restructuring of the De Beers' assets in South Africa to exit its unprofitable operations.
De Beers is in talks with the government over the sale of its Namaqualand diamond mine on the West Coast, which has been restructured to get it to operate "optimally" ahead of the conclusion of the transaction, Penny said. He declined to give a timeframe.
"Then all De Beers' operations in South Africa will be optimised and they'll all be operating profitably," he said.
The revived Voorspoed mine and the marine mining ship will offset the carats sold.
De Beers, which is 45% owned by
Anglo American, has also received rights to explore in South Africa. It has over recent months conducted reconnaissance work in parts of the Free State province where it has its Voorspoed mine.
The Voorspoed mine will produce a million carats once it reaches full production in 2009.
De Beers is spending $100m a year exploring the six countries in which it has now focussed its search for diamonds. De Beers used to search for diamond deposits in 21 countries.
De Beers found another 45 kimberlites during 2007 and will take a number of these into further evaluation. Only a very tiny number of kimberlites are diamondiferous.
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