Alrosa announced yesterday that it had commenced ore mining at the Botuobinskaya kimberlite pipe of its Nyurba Mining and Processing Division in the Republic of Sahka (Yakutia).

The Botuobinskaya pipe is expected to produce 230,000 tonnes of ore and about  one  mn carats of rough diamonds in the year 2015. Alrosa expects the diamond production of this open pit mine to exceed 2 mn carats “when the deposit reaches its design capacity of 400,000 tonnes of ore per year”.

Alrosa has been carrying out stripping operations to prepare the ore body for mining from 2013 and the capital expenditures on pre-production mine development have amounted to approximately 3 bln rubles over the 2013-2014 period.

The launch of Botuobinskaya is in accordance with Alrosa’s development plan, and will compensate for production decrease on the Nyurbinskaya pipe. This, the Company says, will also allow Nyurba MPD to maintain stable production volumes at 7.5 mln carats of rough diamonds per year.

“According to the Russian ore reserves classification system, the reserves of Botuobinskaya amount to 93.021 mln carats of rough diamonds, with an average diamond grade of 5.65 carats per ton, as of 1 January 2015,” Alrosa said in a statement. “The indicated resources of Botuobinskaya amount to 13.679 mln tonnes of ore, with an average diamond grade of 5.19 carats per ton and reserves of 71.044 mln carats under the JORC standards. A relatively large proportion of gem-quality and near-gem-quality crystals with a high degree of transparency characterises the diamonds of Botuobinskaya.”

At the official ceremony to launch  Botuobinskaya, Ilya Ryashchin, the acting president of Alrosa, said, “Over the past few years Alrosa invested significant funds in building new production capacities. The newly commissioned Botuobinskaya pipe is the first new pipe in Yakutia over the last 10 years. The development of this deposit is included in ALROSA’s long term development strategy which envisages an increase of diamond production to 41 mln carats through putting into operation of new pipes”.