De Beers is reportedly smiling all the way to the bank as its “huge mud-sifting” machinery and other technological advances it pioneered is helping it “suck up” diamonds in deep waters off Namibia.
Reuters reports that a “bright green crawling” machine, controlled remotely by a mining vessel called the "Mafuta", was recovering diamonds by sucking up sand and silt 100 m and deeper underwater.
"Mafuta" was the flagship vessel of Debmarine Namibia, a 50/50 joint venture between the Namibian government and De Beers.
"Ten years ago a crawler would be mining at about 200 m2 to 250 m2 an hour. Today we believe that our crawler would mine at about 1 000 m2 an hour," De Beers Marine general manager Domingos Valbom was quoted as saying.
"It is the best way to extract marine diamonds, but the geology in which we operate has to lend itself and the crawler has to have a surface to operate."
Debmarine Namibia, which bought "Mafuta" for $60-million last year, said at the time that the ship was expected to produce 350 000 carats per year, Reuters reports.
Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished
