4/2/2023 0 Comments Almazy anabara diamond mine![]() ![]() Toward the end of 2019, however, news began to surface about a cluster of patients in Wuhan, China suffering from an unknown illness that caused their temperature to spike and left them short of breath.įew people realized it then, but this novel coronavirus would shut down the entire world-some diamond mines included-and dominate the headlines for the next two years.ĭe Beers declined to provide comment for this story, noting it would be inappropriate to discuss specifics about future diamond production.īut in a May 2020 interview with National Jeweler, De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver did speak a bit about the difficulties involved in closing diamond mines, which he described as “complicated ecosystems.” Production dropped off to 138.1 million carats the following year, a 7 percent decline but still well above the industry’s range of production from 2011 to 2016. These new mines contributed to diamond production reaching 150.9 million carats in 2017-a level not seen since 2008, KP statistics show-and 148.4 million carats in 2018. There was also the Renard mine in Québec, operated by Stornoway Diamonds, and the Liqhobong Diamond Mine in Lesotho, operated by Firestone Diamonds (75 percent interest) and the Lesotho government (25 percent). The mine was forecast to produce 4.5 million carats per year but, according to De Beers, surpassed 5 million carats in its first 10 months of operation in 2017. The largest of these was the Gahcho Kué mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories, a joint venture between De Beers Canada and Mountain Province Diamonds. In 20, three new large commercial diamond mines came online. The surge pushed diamond prices to historic levels in 2011 and rallied investor support for projects that had been paused during the downturn. (Photo credit: Ben Perry/Armoury Films, ©De Beers Group)Īs the world recovered, the industry benefitted from what Zimnisky describes as a “boom” in diamond buying by Chinese consumers. Rough diamonds from the Gahcho Kué mine in Canada, one of three significant new diamond mines that came online in 2016-2017 as the demand recovered in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. These high hopes resulted in “lots of projects in the pipeline,” Linde says, but those projects were put on ice when diamond demand and prices softened during the 2008 crisis. There was a new middle class coming up in China and India, as well as other Asian countries, that diamond companies were eager and hopeful to capture as their next consumers, bringing growth the industry believed it could not cultivate in the already-mature U.S. Olya Linde, a partner with Bain and Co.’s Energy & Natural Resources practice and one of the authors of the company’s global diamond report for 2020-2021, said prior to the 2008 crisis, the industry had expectations of strong growth. ![]() It stayed above 160 million carats in 20 before dropping off by more than 25 percent in 2009 (120.2 million carats) in response to the global economic crisis. Global diamond supply figures maintained by the Kimberley Process (KP), which date back to 2004, show production peaked in the early aughts, climbing to 176.7 million carats in 2005. “We’re out of economic deposits at current prices.”Īdding another element of uncertainty is the future of Russian supply, with one of the world’s biggest producers, Alrosa, effectively barred from doing business in one of the world’s biggest diamond markets, the United States. ![]() “We aren’t necessarily out of natural diamonds,” industry analyst Paul Zimnisky says. The question facing the industry is how economically, and in some cases politically, viable is it to get to the ones that are left? South of the Equator, one African nation is poised to become the only country in the world where the three largest diamond miners-Alrosa, De Beers Group and Rio Tinto-all have a presence: Angola. There are more diamonds believed to be buried deep in another bitterly cold climate, Siberia, and beneath the ocean floor. There are large pockets of land all around the globe that could be diamond targets, Smith says, and exploration is ongoing in remote places like the Melville Peninsula and Baffin Island in the far northern reaches of his home country, Canada. Still, the industry has not reached a point where the Earth has no more diamonds to give. “For every diamond you take out of the ground, there’s one fewer to be found,” Gemological Institute of America research scientist Evan Smith says. Molded by a combination of intense heat and pressure over billions of years, they are neither easily formed nor easily replaced. Like coal, oil and gas, diamonds are a non-renewable resource. 24 invasion of Ukraine and the resulting sanctions on Russian diamonds was current as of press time unless otherwise noted. Editor’s Note: This story first appeared in the print edition of the 2022 State of the Majors. ![]()
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