Modern Mining March 2016

DIAMONDS

for fourth quarter 2016 start-up

will take over as the ‘flagship’ of Lesotho’s dia- mond mining industry, a title currently held by the Let še ng mine of Gem Diamonds. Says Brown: “Our carat production at 1 million a year will be around nine times that of Let še ng, in part reflecting our orebody’s much higher grade of 33 cpht compared to the less than 2 cpht of Let še ng. On the other hand, Let še ng has a record of producing – on a consistent basis – very large stones of extremely high value, resulting in the average price it gets per carat being over US$2 000, which is phe- nomenal for a kimberlite mine. By contrast, the base case price in our revised feasibility is US$107 per carat.” He adds that this figure could well be an under-estimate. “The Liqhobong main pipe

lated infrastructure was removed prior to the current project entering construction. “Everything at Liqhobong is new,” says Brown. “The plant we are building is a large custom-built facility with a 3,6 Mt/a capacity and incorporates brand new equipment – noth- ing has been refurbished. The orebody we will mine is also largely untouched. Previous min- ing at Liqhobong mainly targeted the 1,6 ha satellite pipe whereas we will be mining the much bigger main pipe, which is 8,6 ha at sur- face, and which has only been subjected to limited trial mining. The plan is to mine this by open-pit methods to a depth of 383 m over 15 years, in the process producing approximately 1 million carats a year.” An interesting point is whether Liqhobong

The lined raw water dam provides 100 000 m 3 of storage capacity. This photo is from September last year.

A very recent (February 2016) view of the site showing the scrubber and first screen in position.

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March 2016  MODERN MINING  29