De Beers says finding new diamond deposits essential

De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer by value, said it is essential to search for fresh, large sources of kimberlite diamonds.
BusinessDay quoted the group’s head of exploration Charles Skinner as saying that there was a potential threat to the diamond market fr om synthetic diamonds if the supply of natural diamonds cannot keep up with demand.
He claimed there had been no discovery of a major kimberlite for about 30 years.
"The reason for the significant volume of diamonds produced in the period between 1970 to present is because of the feedstock from these significantly large diamond mines that were discovered in that period," he said.
"There’s been massive depletion and it begs the question wh ere will diamonds come from in the future."
Skinner said over 8,000 kimberlites had been found, but only 67 had enough diamonds to justify the economics of establishing a mine.
Of those mines, only seven were major mines like Jwaneng and Orapa in Botswana and Venetia in South Africa, producing 65 percent of global rough diamond production by value, he said.
Meanwhile, Tsodilo Resources president Mike de Wit said the size of kimberlites had dropped to an average of just 2ha from more than 30ha in the 1940s.
"It’s shameful that we’ve not been able to keep that level of discovery going on," he said.
 "The decline in rough diamonds is a reality and the life of mine for new projects is pretty short, 10 or 12 years. We see some new projects coming on stream but they won’t have the impact that a big mine would have."
De Beers said recently that it was willing to spend money on diamond exploration in South Africa and Angola.

Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished