Finsch diamond mine
| Finsch | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
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| Mining technology | until 1990 opencast mining from 1991 civil engineering |
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| Information about the mining company | |||
| Operating company | Petra Diamonds Pty Ltd. | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Kimberlite | ||
| Kimberlite | |||
| Finsch | |||
| Greatest depth | 1000 m | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 28 ° 22 '56 " S , 23 ° 26' 46" E | ||
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| Location | Lime acres | ||
| local community | Kgatelopele | ||
| province | North Cape | ||
| Country | South Africa | ||
 
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Location of the Finsch mine in South Africa |
The Finsch diamond mine ( English Finsch diamond mine ) is a South African mine . It is one of the last diamond mines to operate in South Africa and the second most productive in the country after the Venetia diamond mine .
geography
Geographical location
Finsch is two kilometers outside of the Lime Acres miners' settlement , about 165 km northwest of Kimberley in the Northern Cape Province .
geology
The kimberlite chimney with an original surface of 17.9 hectares is covered by iron band ore , dolomite and limestone . The upper one hundred meters of the chimney are weathered yellow earth, underneath is unweathered blue earth. The chimney was explored down to a depth of 1000 m. The proven reserves are sufficient for another 25 years at the current production rate.
history
The first diamonds were found in 1930 on the property of the British state farm, where the search for gemstones was prohibited. The prospector HS Richter therefore pretended that he was looking for asbestos . In 1939 there was another illegal search for diamonds.
In 1956 Danie de Bruin obtained a permit to prospect for ground minerals. Because he was looking for diamonds, he deliberately let the permit lapse so that nobody would be aware of his activity. His rights were taken over by Thorny Fincham, but the dismantling began in 1959 by Willie Schwabel, who lived with his family in a tent for several months. His mining rights expired after a year, but he and Thorny founded the Finsch Base Minerals Company , but diamond mining was still illegal.
Only after a change in the law in 1960 was it possible to legally search for diamonds, with 26 diamonds being found in the first two hours. Brahm Papendorf joined the owners of the Finsch Base Minerals Company and the company was renamed Finsch Diamonds . The mine was sold to De Beers in 1962 by the three owners and prospectors Willie Schwabel, Brahm Papendorf and Thorny Fincham . Commercial mining began in 1962 when a processing plant and a recovery plant were built on the site . In 1967 De Beers bought the Brits farm from the South African government and officially opened the mine.
First of all, the upper parts of the deposit were mined in open-cast mining. The pit has an area of 55 ha. The orientation of the civil engineering began in 1978 with the sinking of the shaft, which was completed in 1982. Since 1991 only civil engineering has been carried out. Finsch originally owned by De Beers Consolidated Mines (DBCM) and was acquired by Petra Diamonds in September 2011 for $ 200 million .
business
The deposit is extracted below the old open-cast mine using block quarrying . The lower-lying parts of the field are dismantled in the substation . Access is through a shaft and a spiral . The shaft has a diameter of 9 m and a depth of 793 m. It houses three traction sheave conveyor systems with a total capacity of 5 million tons of annual output. The pit is equipped with an automatic driverless truck system for the transport of the material.
In 2015, diamonds with a total weight of 2.07 million carats were extracted from around 5 million tons of rock. Some of the diamonds come from the reprocessing of old processing residues.
Web links
- Finsch. In: petradiamonds.com. Petra Diamonds, accessed November 2, 2015 .
- Finsch Diamond Mine, Northern Cape - Mining Technology. In: mining-technology.com. Retrieved November 2, 2015 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Finsch Mine - Environmental Management Program. Executive summary. (No longer available online.) Shangoni Management Services, July 2007, p. 9 , archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on November 3, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ A b Finsch Diamond Mine, Northern Cape - Mining Technology. In: mining-technology.com. Retrieved November 2, 2015 .
- ↑ a b Finsch. In: petradiamonds.com. Petra Diamonds, accessed November 2, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c d e f Finsch Mine - Environmental Management Program. Brief History of the Finsch Mine. (No longer available online.) Shangoni Management Services, July 2007, pp. 4-5 , archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on November 3, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Welcome to Lime Acres. In: greenkalahari.co.za. Retrieved November 2, 2015 .
- ^ New underground diamond mine to have automated truck loop. In: Mining Weekly. Retrieved November 29, 2015 .
