Alrosa Aiming for $2 Billion in Rough Diamond Sales

The new president of Alrosa on Monday confirmed that the company intends to meet its goal of $2 billion in rough diamond sales in 2009. Fyodor Andreyev plans to sell to Russian and foreign companies.

“The company intends to fulfill its 2009 plan of diamond sales of $2 billion. The first batch of $50 million has already been contracted,” said Andreyev.

Despite the unusually large sales the company already made this year to Russia's state repository Gokhran, Andreyev expects that Alrosa will make some additional sales to it.

Andreyev, who replaced Sergei Vybornov as president of Alrosa on July 15, will need to drastically cut prices to meet current market levels, something the company refused to do since the onset of the economic crisis in October.

The company already indicated that prices will be cut by as much as 25 percent.