Modern Mining March 2019

Voorspoed – leaving a legacy

The Voorspoed diamond mine of De Beers Consolidated Mines (DBCM) has now been closed – the last ore went through the plant in December 2018 – after a search to find a suitable buyer for the asset was unsuccessful. Phillip Bar- ton, the CEO of DBCM, recently spoke to Modern Mining’s Arthur Tassell about the mine’s history, its positive impact on its host communities and the valuable legacy it leaves behind, of which he says De Beers Group is very proud.

W hen Voorspoed – located 30 km north-east of Kroon- stad in Free State Province – was officially opened in November 2008, it already had more than a century of history behind it as mining at the site first started in 1906, with the mine being operated by Voorspoed Diamond Mining Company (VDMC). The orebody was primarily exploited by open-pit methods but some underground mining was also under- taken. Operations continued for a few years but the mine proved uneconomic and it was closed in 2012. Barton says that what really defeated VDMC was the incredible hardness of the kimber- lite, which proved more than a match for the

Phillip Barton, CEO of DBCM.

crushing technology available at the time. “De Beers bought the mine in 1912 but decided not to restart operations,” he says. “Every now and then over the next few decades the company would take another look at the orebody but the numbers never added up and it remained dor- mant until the early 2000s, when fresh studies concluded that the Voorspoed kimberlite could finally be economically developed.” Barton points out that De Beers Group never had any illusions about Voorspoed. “It is a low-grade kimberlite and it was always clear that it was going to be a marginal operation with a fairly limited life,” he explains. “We

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32  MODERN MINING  March 2019

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