In the fourth quarter of 2011, De Beers recovered 6.5 million carats of diamonds, which is a 30-percent slump from the third quarter of 2011. The news was broken in the press release distributed by Anglo American. Thus, it turns out that De Beers produced 31.328 million carats last year, which is 5% lower than in 2010.
Russia’s diamond miner ALROSA produced 34.4 million carats in 2011 confidently retaining the first place in the world in terms of carat output the third year running.
The press release says the reduction mainly reflects De Beers’ deliberate focus on increasing waste stripping, as well as scheduled maintenance at the Debswana and DBCM operations in recognition of short-term global macro-economic volatility.
At a meeting last December the Supervisory Board of ALROSA decided to bring the Group’s diamond output in 2012 to 34.6 million carats.
Tatiana Alexandrova, Rough&Polished, Moscow
