Miner Miscommunication: A Lack of Clarity

(Rapaport) - A bizarre press release from Alrosa landed in the Rapaport News inbox in early October, purporting to relay positive results from the “washing season of 2018” at one of its subsidiaries. What exactly occurs during the Almazy Anabara washing season, which “lasted from the twenties of May to the 24th of September”? That much was a mystery. Since the text seemed to be about mining and production, we presumed Alrosa was describing something more critical to its business than how well its cleaners had mopped the floors, or whether the Russian executives’ shirts had dried efficiently in the summer sun. So we carried on reading. “Such results were achieved due to, without limitation, the advanced diamond-bearing sand processing technology,” clarified Pavel Marinychev, CEO of Almazy Anabara, in the next sentence. “In particular, we have upgraded the X-ray luminescent separation line to decrease workload of dense-media separation units at the Bolshaya Kuonamka deposit and to increase capacity of grading units.” At this point, the only thing clear to us was that we didn’t understand what this news item was trying to say, and neither would our readers. So we decided not to cover it. Alrosa’s subsequent mention of expansions to “tank parks of fuel and lubricant materials” only left us more baffled, and even less likely to run the story. This is a common problem in the diamond industry, especially among miners — and not just those like Alrosa, where English is a second language. When journalists receive an unclear press release, they either republish it without a thought — which is bad practice and unhelpful for the reader — or disregard it altogether.