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March 2016
MODERN MINING
29
feature
DIAMONDS
for fourth quarter 2016 start-up
The lined raw water dam
provides 100 000 m
3
of
storage capacity. This photo
is from September last year.
lated infrastructure was removed prior to the
current project entering construction.
“Everything at Liqhobong is new,” says
Brown. “The plant we are building is a large
custom-built facility with a 3,6 Mt/a capacity
and incorporates brand new equipment – noth-
ing has been refurbished. The orebody we will
mine is also largely untouched. Previous min-
ing at Liqhobong mainly targeted the 1,6 ha
satellite pipe whereas we will be mining the
much bigger main pipe, which is 8,6 ha at sur-
face, and which has only been subjected to
limited trial mining. The plan is to mine this by
open-pit methods to a depth of 383 m over 15
years, in the process producing approximately
1 million carats a year.”
An interesting point is whether Liqhobong
will take over as the ‘flagship’ of Lesotho’s dia-
mond mining industry, a title currently held
by the Let
še
ng mine of Gem Diamonds. Says
Brown: “Our carat production at 1 million a
year will be around nine times that of Let
še
ng,
in part reflecting our orebody’s much higher
grade of 33 cpht compared to the less than
2 cpht of Let
še
ng. On the other hand, Let
še
ng
has a record of producing – on a consistent
basis – very large stones of extremely high
value, resulting in the average price it gets
per carat being over US$2 000, which is phe-
nomenal for a kimberlite mine. By contrast,
the base case price in our revised feasibility is
US$107 per carat.”
He adds that this figure could well be an
under-estimate. “The Liqhobong main pipe
A very recent (February
2016) view of the site
showing the scrubber and
first screen in position.