Modern Mining March 2016

feature DIAMONDS Primary crusher steelwork at the Liqhobong site in January this year.

Liqhobong project on course

Firestone Diamonds (Firestone) is making excellent progress on the construction of its new Liqhobong kimberlite mine in the Maluti Mountains of Lesotho, with the project 65 % complete (as at the end of January) and on course to com- mission and start production in the last quarter of this year. The site has also enjoyed an unblemished safety record thus far with more than 2 million man hours having been worked by a labour force that numbers nearly 1 000 people without a single LTI having being recorded. Modern Mining’s Arthur Tassell recently discussed the project with Firestone’s CEO, Stuart Brown.

L iqhobong is probably the only full-scale diamond mine under construc- tion in Southern Africa, with most other diamond projects currently underway – for example, the Venetia Underground Project, the Lace underground mine in the Free State, the C-Cut at Cul- linan or the small Lerala project in

Botswana – being more accu- rately categorised as ‘brownfield’ developments. Some might argue that Liqhobong has also seen some previous commercial mining but it is nevertheless prob-

ably fair to describe it as a ‘greenfield’ project as the previous small plant on site and virtually all re-

Stuart Brown, CEO of Firestone Diamonds.

28  MODERN MINING  March 2016