De Beers has resumed plans to ramp-up its Snap Lake diamond mine and optimistically predicts an improvement in global demand for next year following the 2009 fall out, reported the Victoria Times Colonist.
"We're actually looking at next year probably about 10% or a bit more [increased diamond demand] against where we were this year. So it's up, but it's not anywhere near to where we were in 2008 and 2007," De Beers Canada chief executive Jim Gowans told Reuters.
Due to 2009’s lowered demand for precious stones, the company reduced diamond output last year at its two Canadian diamond mines in the Northwest Territories and Ontario. However, recent positive trends in the global diamond industry have enabled those moves to begin to be turned around.
"We're anticipating what I would call a slow steady rebound over about two, three years, maybe four years," said Mr. Gowans.
Gowans went on to say that the diamond mine in the Northwest Territories, ‘Snap Lake’, is now back on track in order to achieve its full diamond production levels and that it will take approximately one and a half to two years to get it back up and running, producing 500,000 carats of diamonds this year and yielding just over 1.5 million carats annually.
Additionally, the company’s Ontario based diamond mine ‘Victor’ should produce “just over 600,000 carats this year, which is the mine's expected annual run rate,” he said.
The company is also developing a joint venture with junior Mountain Province Diamonds named ‘the Gahcho Kue project.’ The diamond project, also in the Northwest Territories, holds a resource of about 50 million carats.
