Windhoek — The country's leading marine diamond producer, De Beers Marine Namibia, has increased its diamond production forecasts for the year from 970,000 carats to 1.1 million carats following a splendid first quarter performance by its vessels, managing director Otto Shikongo told the Economist.

Last year, the company produced 1.018 million carats.

"The current forecast for 2007 has been increased to 1.1 million carats. This is as a result of the excellent performance during the first half of the year," said Shikongo.

The company will later this month commission a second crawler on the mv Ya Toivo, one of its fleet of five production vessels based in the Atlantic Ocean, at a cost of N$100 million, Shikongo said. The crawler will be used for ore extraction.

Shikongo said until May, the mv Ya Toivo has been using one crawler for ore extraction.

"De Beers Marine Namibia decided to commission a second crawler that is designed to be more efficient and reliable. In addition, by having two crawlers, it gives the maintenance team an opportunity to maintain one crawler while the second one is mining. This contributes positively to the overall vessel utilisation. The estimated increase in overall vessel utilisation is in the order of 15%," said Shikongo.

Shikongo said the company is continuously increasing mining efficiencies through technology enhancements on the mining fleet. There is a team dedicated fulltime to research and development, he said.

"Currently, a concept of dredging is being investigated. This mining concept is significantly different to the current technology. It is anticipated that the feasibility study will be completed in 2008," he said.

In 2005, the company conducted a feasibility study to acquire an additional vessel. The feasibility study was concluded in 2006 and indicated that it was not economical to execute such a project.

"This was mainly due to the sudden increase in the construction of a hull resulting from the upward swing in the shipping and oil markets during the time. The feasibility study indicated that the cost of such a project was in the region of N$2 billion. De Beers Marine Namibia continues to investigate affordable alternatives," he said.