Krone-Endora at Venetia diamond mine project
Canadian diamond mining company Diamcor Mining has completed the reconfiguration of the existing generator systems at its Krone-Endora at Venetia diamond mine project, in Limpopo, South Africa.
The company said on July 12 that these efforts were aimed at addressing the negative impacts on processing volumes and diamond recoveries, along with associated revenues, experienced in recent months as a result of increased power outages and loadshedding.
With these initiatives now complete, Diamcor can process material moving forward as required without dependence on power from State-owned Eskom’s national grid.
“The increased frequency and uncertainty of power supply at the project was significantly limiting our ability to process material and generate diamond recoveries and associated revenues in recent months and required a solution to eliminate these issues moving forward,” Diamcor CEO Dean Taylor said.
The existing generator systems were originally installed to address short-term power outages. However, given the increased frequency of daily power outages experienced over the past few quarters, addressing this issue became a key priority for the company.
In addition to the reconfiguration of the existing power systems, refinements to the project’s screening and processing facilities are also expected to further reduce power requirements and lower operating costs for the long term.
“Overcoming these issues is a significant milestone which allows us to now aggressively resume advancing our ongoing trial mining efforts, processing volumes, and the bulk-sampling efforts on the greater areas of the project," Taylor said.