July 2014
MODERN MINING
29
EVENTS
beyond
Above:
The Karowe
diamond mine in the
Orapa area. It is expected to
produce between 400 000
and 420 000 carats in 2014
(photo: Lucara).
Left:
The Lerala diamond
mine, located near the Mar-
tin’s Drift border post. Be-
tween them, DiamonEx and
Mantle spent US$31 million
on developing the mine’s in-
frastructure and Kimberley
Diamonds is now planning
a further upgrade of the
plant (photo: Kimberley
Diamonds).
companies to operate Lerala successfully, one
might wonder why KDL believes it can reverse
the mine’s fortunes. Halgreen anticipated this
question at the conference and told delegates
that not only would KDL be able to learn from
the experience – and mistakes – of DiamonEx
and Mantle but that it had completed an exten-
sive review of the 230 t/h plant and its design
to pinpoint why it had not worked optimally.
He said that apart from modifying the plant to
increase efficiencies and raise recovery rates,
KDL would increase capacity to allow the mine
to reach 1,9 Mt/a of ore throughput (and pro-
duce 400 000 carats per year).
Halgreen said a decision to contract mine at
Lerala had been taken and that the company
had engaged consultants to provide lump sum
turnkey pricing for the recommissioning of the
operation. He added that the mine would re-
enter production in the first half of 2015.
If Lerala has never – thus far – lived up to
its promise, a second new Botswanan diamond
mine – Karowe – has far exceeded the expecta-
tions of its developer, Canada’s Lucara Diamond
Corporation. An update on the mine was given
at the conference by Ribson Gabonowe, MD of
Boteti Mining, Lucara’s subsidiary in Botswana.
Located some 400 km north of Gaborone near
Letlhakane village in the Orapa area, Karowe
was commissioned in 2012 and since then
had performed extremely well, delivering – in
Gabonowe’s words – “exceptional value to its
stakeholders” and establishing itself “as one of
the leading producers of large and exceptional
value gemstones.”
Elaborating on this second point, Gabonowe
told his audience that – as at the end of May
2014 – Karowe had recovered 24 gem stones
of greater than 100 carats and seven gemstones
of more than 200 carats – all in the space of
two years. He added that given the mine’s his-
tory of large stone recovery, a large diamond
recovery stage (LDR) was being added to the
treatment plant.
Diamonds – and, interestingly, iron ore and
uranium as well – were the subject of a presen-
tation by Dr Mike de Wit, President and COO,
and Dr Alistair Jeffcoate, Chief Geologist,
both of Tsodilo Resources, an exploration
junior listed on the TSX-V which has exten-
sive tenements in north-west Botswana. De
Wit, well-known in the diamond exploration
field, described the company’s diamond explo-
ration, which is centred on ground where
Ashton Mining discovered 19 kimberlites in
the 1990s, but possibly the more fascinating
part of the joint presentation was Jeffcoate’s
review of Tsodilo’s Xaudum Iron Formation
(XIF) project.
Jeffcoate joined Tsodilo last year and was
brought on board specifically for his iron
ore expertise – he was previously Senior
Geologist at Rio Tinto’s Simandou iron ore
project in Guinea, West Africa. He described
the XIF – which extends over 36,8 km – as a
Neoproterozoic ‘Rapitan Style’ BIF and said
other Neoproterozoic BIF resources of note
included the Rapitan Group of north-west
Canada (18,6 billion tonnes at 47 % Fe) and
