The Finsch diamond mine, located 165 kilometers west of Kimberley in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province, was originally founded by De Beers in 1961, based on a 17.9-hectare kimberlite pipe.
In 1978, underground development at the Finsch mine launched and the shaft was commissioned in 1982. In November 2007, the Finsch mine set a safety record, becoming the first mine of any kind in South Africa to register six million fatality-free shifts.
De Beers inaugurated a new diamond recovery plant at the mine in 2008, designed to improve value of diamonds mined using “diamond friendly” technology, an innovation that boosted the mine’s ore processing capacity from 5.8 million tons per year to 7.2 million tons. The Finsch mine contains a resource of 48.1 million carats of diamonds valued at some $56 billion, with a yield of 1.5 million carats per year.
In January 2011, De Beers announced that it was planning to sell the Finsch mine to Petra Diamonds for $200 million in cash.
The transaction completed in September 2011, and Petra assumed management of the mine. Production at Finsch is expected to increase to 2 million carats annually by 2018, making Petra Diamonds the world’s third-largest diamond producer after Alrosa and De Beers.
Petra CEO Johan Dippenaar called the acquisition of the Finsch diamond mine a “landmark development” for Petra. “Finsch is a major diamond producer and this acquisition will serve to immediately more than double our current production,” Dippenaar said ahead of the completion of the sale.
