Welcome to Mining Weekly. In this podcast, read by Olivia Spadavecchia of Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly, we bring you the past week’s top news stories from the mining industry in South Africa and the rest of the world.

In this week’s bulletin:
- Fatal accidents in South African mines fuel safety concerns,
- De Beers to shake up its Diamdel operations, and
- Gem producer KimCor plans to double production at its tailings-dump operation.

SAFETY CONCERNS

Fatalities in the South African mining industry escalated this month, with both the platinum- and gold-mining sectors reporting mine accidents that killed a total of six workers in four incidents, all in one week.

This comes just weeks after government announced that, for the first time in the history of South African mining, the industry recorded fewer than 200 fatalities in one year.

Labour unions have lashed out at employers, arguing that not enough is been done to improve the safety of the mining industry, which missed its target of a 20% improvement in 2006, killing 199 workers.

Gold mining fared the worst in 2006 with 113 fatalities, while diamond mining was at the other end of the scale with four deaths.

DIAMOND RESTRUCTURING

The world’s largest diamond producer, De Beers, which is taking a close look at all its assets to ensure it remains “fit for purpose”, will embark on a restructuring process of its Diamdel group of companies.

De Beers says that Diamdel will continue to sell to nonsightholders, through Diamdel NV, in Antwerp, and the Hindustan Diamond Corporation, in India, but that all operations, except the Hindustan Diamond Corporation, will be scaled back.

The South African Diamdel office will cease trading, as De Beers has agreed to provide diamond skills and services to the soon-to-be-established State Diamond Trader, which will buy ten per cent of all diamonds produced locally and sell them to the country’s diamond cutters and polishers.

DIAMOND RECOVERY

London-based gem producer KimCor has outlined new plans for its South African diamond business, which includes doubling production at its dump mining operation, becoming a low-cost producer and, possibly, new acquisitions.

This followed the implementation of a new mining strategy, which involved the installation of a new water-supply system, a new waste tailings conveyor system and an agreement with the State for the handling of waste tailing material.

KimCor, led by Martyn Churchouse, recovers diamonds from mine waste at Bellsbank, near Kimberley.

The company says that it plans to double production from seven hundred and twenty thousand tons a year to one point four six million tons a year, as it starts to benefit from the new strategy and adding processing capacity to the plant.

The Bellsbank plant-processing capacity will be increased in a two-stage process and modifications to the plant will be commissioned within the next twenty weeks.

Also, in this week’s Mining Weekly magazine, read our cover story on ‘how to start a mine’, which offers six steps towards satisfying the rising demand for commodities.

We also report on fluorspar miner Sallies’ third capital-raising exercise in as many years.

Finally, don’t miss our feature on pumps.

That’s a round up of this week’s stories on Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly. For more on these and other stories, visit miningweekly.com