Open-Pit Mining Ends at Udachnaya Pipe; Production Moves Underground

(IDEX Online News) – Open-pit mining at ALROSA’s Udachnaya pipe in Western Yakutia has ended. Mining will now take place underground.

The pipe was opened in June 1955 and was ALROSA’s largest open-pit mine. The 640-meter deep pipe has produced about 350 million tons of ore containing rough diamonds worth around $80 billion over the course of its lifetime, with an output of up to 12.8 million tons of ore per year.

The final blasting operations at the open-pit mine took place in the first half of 2015, producing 1.05 million tons of ore (about 1.7 million carats of rough diamonds) during the year.

The underground mine at the Udachnaya pipe is targeted to produce 4 million tons of ore per year from 2019 onwards. Once this target is reached, the mine will become the company’s largest underground mine. This year, the mine is scheduled to produce about 0.78 million carats of rough diamonds; a total that will increase to more than 5 million carats in 2019.

“The Udachny open-pit made a great contribution to ALROSA’s development, and its conservation represents a milestone in the history of the company,” said president Andrey Zharkov.

“However, we feel confident about the future…The Udachny mining and processing division will remain one of the key production divisions of ALROSA and play a significant part in the implementation of the company’s long-term development program which provides for the increase of diamond output to 41 million carats.”