Zimbabwe: Marange Diamonds Lose Global Shine

11 February 2014

THE Marange fields consist of widespread alluvial mining, where diamonds have been deposited on the earth's surface and can be easily collected with rather light mining equipment, shovels, sieves and even bare hands. The mining at Marange contrasts with the worlds other large-scale diamond projects where commercial open-pit and underground mines require advanced engineering and state-of-the-art heavy equipment costing billions of dollars to build and operate.

Alluvial diamond projects tend to have a much shorter life span than open-pit or underground projects, as the resource is limited to the easily assessable surface stones, which can be produced rather easily and rapidly. While Marange is a relatively new project with formal mining only commencing 5 years ago, there are already indications that most of economic resource has been depleted.

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