Alrosa yesterday announced that Andrey Pismenny, its former Chief Engineer, has been appointed as CEO of Severalmaz, a Joint Stock Company (JSC), in which Alrosa has an over 95 % shareholding.

Severalmaz has been operating in the Arkhangelsk region to develop   the Lomonosov field – what Alrosa calls, “Europe’s largest primary diamond deposit”  – and is one of the youngest mining enterprises in Russia.

Pismenny holds a five year contract for the job, much like his  predecessor,  Sergey Gerasimov (former CEO of Severalmaz), who had held this position from 2010.

Severalmaz has been developing the Lomonosov diamond field since 2005. The investment period was completed in 2014, when Severalmaz put into operation the second module of the processing plant, increasing its processing capacity from 1 to 4 million tons of ore per year.

“The processing capacity increase allowed the company to start mining at Karpinskogo-1 pipe in addition to mining operations at the existing Arkhangelskaya pipe,” said Alrosa in a press release. “All implemented measures will give Severalmaz an opportunity to increase diamond production to 2 million carats in 2015 and to over 5 million carats thereafter.”

The company also said that Severalmaz’s development  is an important part of its  programme  that “envisages production growth from 36.2 million carats in 2014 to more than 41 million carats by 2019”.