Tyre shortage affects Debswana

Assistant general manager at the Orapa mine, Dam Mahupela explained in an interview yesterday that so far the losses in terms of production for the whole month of January is estimated to be in the region of 1.3 million tonnes of waste exposing the ore. Mahupela expects no changes in the month of February. He was worried that the inherent problem was that if the waste stays for too long, it affects the ore quality.

He would not with any certainty say how many carats the loss would amount to. The shortage in supply of tyres is attributable to a boom in the mining sector in both China and India following a rise in the global metal prices. Some of the mines that were previously unoperational are now fully functioning, hence the demand for the tyres globally have gone up and in some cases exceeded supply. Debswana was previously supplied directly by Bridgestone from Japan and Michelin from France.