Engineering and construction company Fluor Corporation last month launched its new office in Gaborone, Botswana, with Botswana Chamber of Mines CEO Charles Siwawa, among other dignitaries and business leaders, in attendance. The new office will serve as the company’s operations base to expand and diversify its activities across sub-Saharan Africa.

“Africa is an emerging economy and Botswana, as one of the continent’s leading democracies, will provide an excellent base for Fluor’s business. We are looking forward to strengthening our ability to serve clients, both existing and new, in this developing region, as well as supporting Botswana’s goal to boost local business and employment diversification,” says Fluor mining and metals group president Rick Koumouris.

Since the early 2000s, Fluor has been working in Botswana and established a sustainable client base in the country. Among the company’s first projects was the provision of technical services for a new diamond processing plant at Botswana-based diamond miner Debswana’s Orapa diamond mine.

Orapa is currently mined at a depth of 250 m and is expected to reach 450 m by 2026. In 2014, Orapa produced over 12-million carats of diamonds.

The resource consists of one volcanic pipe that separates into two distinct pipes at depth, namely north and south pipes, which erupted through the Transvaal strata and the overlying Karoo sediments over 200-million years ago.

Fluor also completed Debswana’s Jwaneng Cut 8 openpit expansion project in September 2012. The mine expansion enables the removal of overburden to allow the mine to access 91-million tonnes of ore that will yield around 102-million carats of diamonds and extends the life of the mine to 2025.

The company also completed Debswana’s Morupule coal mine Phase 1 expansion, which increased production to about 3.2-million tons a year.

The main target of the project was to complete the relevant facilities to support meeting the “first coal” milestone by mid-November 2011. Fluor achieved this significant milestone two weeks ahead of schedule.

“The newly established office will allow Fluor to offer integrated solutions to clients in the mining and metals, energy and chemicals, power and infrastructure market sectors. Our capability and expertise to execute diverse scopes of work and deliver them to cost, function and schedule has earned Fluor a well-regarded reputation globally,” says Fluor Botswana country manager Andries Bester.

“We strongly believe that having a permanent project execution presence in the country will provide more opportunities in employment of local citizens and for supplier and skills development,” he concludes.