Modern Mining October 2016

DIAMONDS

Liqhobong speeds to completion Defying the sceptics, Firestone Diamonds, listed on London’s AIM, is currently in the process of bringing on stream Southern Africa’s newest kimberlite mine – Liqhobong in Lesotho. The new US$224 million open-pit mine is projected to produce around 1 million carats a year and will give a huge boost to the Mountain Kingdom’s economy,

pushing up GDP by around 5 %. Remarkably, the project – which is running well ahead of its revised schedule – has been built with an absolutely flawless safety record, as Firestone’s CEO, Stuart Brown (right), recently related at a media briefing in Johannesburg in early October.

B rown told the media group that the site had worked well over 3 million LTI free hours since the start of construction in July 2014. “We regard this as a phe- nomenal achievement, given the fact that we had around 1 000 workers and up to 14 cranes deployed at peak on a very busy site with re- stricted access,” he said. He added that the logistics of the project had also been formi- dable, with around 2 000 truck loads being required to transport all the equipment to the

site in the Maluti Mountains of Lesotho. A 20-year veteran of De Beers (he rose to the position of Group CFO and also served as joint Acting CEO during his last year with the Group), Brown was appointed CEO of Firestone in late 2013, charged with bringing into suc- cessful production a project which had defeated its previous owners, European Diamonds and Kopane. Within weeks of being appointed – and despite scepticism in the market as to whether a cash-strapped junior with a then market cap of around US$35 million could build a major

22  MODERN MINING  October 2016