In the last of the series of articles on the history of early diamond mining, I thought it appropriate to end this particular section of South Africa’s mining narrative with a brief history of the Koffiefontein diamond mine as it belongs to the category of the very first kimberlite pipes discovered in the early 1870s.

The Koffiefontein mine has been one of the world’s top producing kimberlite pipes according to average value per carat. It is renowned for its high-value diamonds, a regular proportion of which are beautiful white diamonds between 5 ct and 30 ct in size.

Despite the high quality of its diamond yield, the mine has had a difficult history, characterised by periods of abandonment, challenging operating conditions, and even closure.

The first diamond to be unearthed on the Koffiefontein farm was found in July 1870 by a transport rider carrying goods between Colesburg and the alluvial diamond diggings at Barkly West. (Incidentally, the farm Koffiefontein got its name from a fountain where transport riders stopped to make coffee during the colonial era.)

Although a few diggers came to inves- tigate the discovery, Koffiefontein was soon abandoned following the discovery of the much richer kimberlite pipes on the De Beers farm 110 km to the north.

However, interest in the diamond deposit was again aroused in 1877 when a mining engineer from Kimberley prospected the farm and found diamonds worth some £300. This resulted in the proclamation of the farm as a public diggings on December 28, 1878. The mine was pegged out into some 1 700 claims, measuring 30 ft2, and a township of 168 stands was simultaneously laid out.

What followed was not a rush of individual diggers to the new mine because it was, by that time, realised that diamond deposits were best mined by companies operating on a fairly large scale rather than by individuals.

Thus, the claims were acquired by a number of publicly listed diamond mining companies which, after a sig- nificant capital investment of about £130 000 into operational equipment and facilities, began production towards the end of 1881 and early 1882.

Unfortunately, when production started, the diamond market was descending into a state of depression owing to an overproduction of the precious stones and falling carat prices. As a result, the mining operations on Koffiefontein were no longer economi- cally viable and the mine was abandoned by the insolvent companies in 1883.

However, after the amalgamation of the Kimberley diamond mines in the late 1880s, De Beers Consolidated Mines took control of the market and began to manipulate prices in its favour. Thus, by 1889, the depressed atmosphere in the diamond market began to clear and the Koffiefontein mine was once again considered a viable enterprise.

The mine was opened again in December 1889, when it was declared a public diggings by the Free State government and pegged out into a total of 1 187 claims.
De Beers Consolidated bought some 996 of those available claims, while the remaining claims were bought by four much smaller diamond mining firms.

However, operations had barely started when De Beers opted to cease the working of its claims. This was due to the fact that the company was dissatisfied with the operational costs, the labour shortage and low carat yield of the mine. On account of the low carat yield of the mine, the closure of operations of Koffiefontein mine is not surprising, unlike that of the Kimberley mine: the yield from the Kimberley mine ran from 23 ct to 29 ct per 100 loads of blue ground, whereas at Koffiefontein it seldom reached 5.5 ct per 100 loads.

Faced with the choice of resuming production or not, De Beers finally decided in 1892 to abandon its 996 claims.

The mine remained in the doldrums until 1894, when a London-based company, the Koffiefontein Mines Ltd Company, bought all the abandoned claims. The company was established by Alfred Moseley, a London diamond merchant who believed that, if worked properly, the Koffiefontein mine could be a profitable proposition.

The Koffiefontein Mines Company operated the mine without much success for just under two decades before it was bought, once again, by De Beers Consolidated Mines in 1911.
Despite its difficult beginnings, the mine did become a successful under- taking although, like its sister mines, production was stopped several times during periods of war and economic depression.

Interestingly, the largest rough diamond ever to be discovered at the mine was a 232,34 ct diamond found in 1994.

The Koffiefontein pipe was mined as an openpit operation until 1981. On completion of the openpit operations, the pit had a surface area of 44 ha and a diameter of 750 m, and a depth in excess of 270 m. Thereafter, underground development began and the ore is now mined from the underground workings using the front cave mining method.

Petra Diamonds acquired Koffie- fontein in July 2007 from De Beers and this acquisition marked the initial implementation of Petra’s strategy to become a significant diamond producer.

Presently, the Koffiefontein Mine has a resource of some 5.9 million carats.

(Readers can look forward to articles on the early history of coal mining as well as the early history of gold prospecting and mining in South Africa.)