Debswana Remains De Beers' Major Producer

By Tumelo Setshogo
Correspondent | Monday February 11, 2008 00:00

The group's Chairman said this on Friday when answering questions during a telephone conferencing from South Africa after the company unveiled its annual results for 2007. Nicky Oppenheimer said De Beers was hopeful that the Government of Botswana would make sure that power outages 'do not affect the mines, looking at the importance of diamonds to the economy of the country.' In an interview by similar means, De Beers Botswana's Chief Executive Officer Sheila Khama said the diamond mines were only marginally affected by power cuts so far. 

But Khama, who sits on the board of De Beers Botswana, said the company had a contingency plan to surface production during power outages. Meanwhile, De Beers' annual results show that Debswana, which is a joint venture between the Government of Botswana and De Beers, remains the group's major producer.

Last year the company contributed 33,6 million carats out of a total of 51,1 million carats produced by De Beers. The company also reported that its consolidated mines in South Africa increased production to 15 million carats, mainly due to improvements made to the diamond recovery process at Venetia Mine where carats recovered increased by 9 percent.

Production of offshore operations in Namibia has also increased, resulting in Namdeb, the joint venture with the Namibian government, increasing production by 4percent to 2.2 million carats. The group's underlying earnings have increased by 14 percent to US$483 million (2006 US$425 million) while EBITDA remained steady as effective cost management at the group's African mining operations offset the impact of slightly lower sales which were constrained by supply to the Diamond Trading Company (DTC).

The group has filed a mining licence for AK06, which is a kimberlite in the Orapa region of Botswana, through Boteti Exploration Company, a joint venture between De Beers, African Diamonds Plc and Wati Ventures. AK06 has an estimated reserve of 11.1 million carats.

Boteti will hold public meetings from February 19 to 21 to keep communities abreast with the progress on the proposed AK06 mine. These feedback meetings will be held at Xere, Rakops, Xhumo, Kedia, Mopipi, Mokobaxane, Matshumo, Mosu, Khwee and Letlhakane.