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Head of ALROSA admitted possible decrease in diamond output due to accident at Mir

01 september 2017
ALROSA may reduce diamond production next year due to the accident at the Mir mine that occurred on August 4, 2017, the company’s President Sergey Ivanov said at a conference call on financial results for the first half of the year, RBC reported.
"There is a high probability that ALROSA's output will be lower in 2018 than in 2017," he said, but added that a "slight" decrease is possible. At the same time, he does not expect a decline in sales in 2018 given that the company’s current diamond reserves are 14.4 million carats, according to RBC. This year, sales will not be lower than the production target - 39.2 million carats.
The Mir mine produced 2.7 million carats of diamonds before the accident. Its annual production target was set at 3.3 million carats, but ALROSA plans to increase production at other diamond fields, including the Internatsionalny and Yubileinaya diamond mines, in order to partly replace the volumes dropped out of production, RBC said. Thus, the company expects to reach this year's production target. However, according to Igor Sobolev, Executive Director of ALROSA, the mine’s restoration may take a long time. "Now it is obvious that it will not be several months, so we are working on recovery options, and this will be a difficult decision," he said.
The property of ALROSA is insured by SOGAZ. According to Sergey Ivanov, who prior to joining ALROSA in March 2017 headed SOGAZ, the Mir mine was insured against all risks, other than covering downtime and lost profits, for more than 10 billion rubles. The company’s representatives did not answer the question asked at the conference about whether insurance payments will cover all expenses for the restoration of the mine, RBC said adding that ALROSA's former top manager Yury Doinikov had predicted that it would take at least "four years" to restore the mine.