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DIAMONDS
November 2016
MODERN MINING
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ramp up
A long hole rig drilling the trough in one of the 839 production level draw points.
cost at around R7 billion. Petra’s current C-Cut
project – Phase 1 – is a scaled-down version
of what De Beers was proposing and requires
a capital investment of around R4,2 billion. It
is also indicative of Petra’s well-proven ability
to design and implement projects with an effi-
ciency which is relatively rare in the modern
global mining industry, where cost and sched-
ule overruns on capital projects tend to be the
norm rather than the exception.
Says Cloete: “Our Phase 1 project encom-
passes a 5,7 ha portion of the kimberlite and
extends the life of Cullinan to 2030. Phase 2
would add 7,8 ha to the C-Cut footprint and
would extend the life of mine well beyond
2030 but at this stage is purely conceptual. De
Beers’ plan was to develop the C-Cut in one go,
whereas we are targeting only the western side
of the orebody in the upper portion of the C-Cut
resource in our Phase 1 project.”
He adds that the total C-Cut resource con-
tains an estimated 131 Mct. To put this in
context, this is slightly more than the 128 Mct
of diamonds that Cullinan – one of the world’s
most famous diamond mines – has thus far
Schematic of the Cullinan mine
showing the C-Cut project.