Diamond miner De Beers Group has, consistent with recent actions to improve business resilience, decided to pause production at its Venetia mine, in South Africa, for two years to reduce costs while also rephasing capital expenditure on the Venetia underground project.

This will involve critical infrastructure investment to enhance the capacity and efficiency of the mine, with the intention to support future production growth as business and industry conditions improve.

De Beers says it is engaging with stakeholders in accordance with relevant requirements and the company’s values as it moves through this process, and will both support impacted employees and continue to invest in its community and social and labour plan commitments.

This proposed action at Venetia mine follows the decision earlier this year to pause the Tuzo Phase 3 expansion project at the joint venture Gahcho Kué mine, in Canada.

This comes as De Beers is advancing delivery of its business streamlining by setting out a number of planned portfolio and organisational changes to ensure an efficient cost base that strengthens resilience in the near-term while enhancing future competitiveness and retaining optionality as industry conditions improve.

Since 2024, De Beers has been streamlining its business in line with its origins strategy to reduce costs, divest noncore assets and prioritise investment in activities that create the most value.

The company notes that significant progress has been made, with more than $100-million of yearly overhead costs removed from the business, the sale or closure of a number of noncore assets and significant capital and cost reconfigurations to asset expansion projects.

Simultaneously, De Beers has reinvested in natural diamond category marketing to support the industry’s efforts to grow natural diamond demand, launching new large-scale campaigns and collaborating with key stakeholders across the value chain to foster industry-wide investment.

The company explains that global consumer demand for natural diamond jewellery returned to growth in 2025, while natural diamond sales increased across US independent jewellers in 2025 and into the first quarter of this year, led by higher-value diamonds and those promoted by De Beers’ Desert diamonds marketing campaign.

On the supply side, De Beers explains that global rough diamond production is now decreasing, with several producers closing mines this year.

London-listed Petra Diamonds announced in May that it would place its Finsch mine, in South Africa, in business rescue in order to protect the overall business.

While the increasing rarity of diamonds and the emerging signs of improvement in consumer demand are likely to support longer-term value creation, rough diamond trading conditions are expected to remain challenging in the near-term owing to cyclical and industry-specific factors.

In parallel, De Beers plans to reconfigure its global operating model to refocus and prioritise resources on the core operational businesses and reduce its central corporate cost base.

“In line with our commitment to focus and streamline our business, we are making a number of changes to De Beers to ensure greater business resilience in the near term, while supporting long-term value creation.

“We recognise the protracted challenging conditions as the diamond industry evolves, though we are encouraged by signs of consumer demand growth in the US and beyond, particularly in higher quality diamonds.

“Global rough diamond supply is falling, bringing more support to the market. The changes we are making to our business are focused on underpinning our efficiency now and into the future, favourably positioning De Beers in its leadership role,” says De Beers Group CEO Al Cook.

De Beers Group says it will maintain current production levels through its other operations and that its previous production guidance remains unchanged.