Alrosa "Considered Permanent Mine Closures"
March 24, 25
(IDEX Online) - Alrosa, Russia's state-run diamond company, considered the permanent closure of its low-margin mines, rather than the temporary suspension of operations that it announced last week.
That's according to a management letter to staff, obtained by the independent news agency Interfax.
It outlined a series of options, which included mining the rich sections of poorer-performing deposits for the next two years, then permanently closing them with the loss of a large number of jobs.
However it chose instead to suspend mining at the Verkhne-Munskoye deposit's Zapolyarny and Magnitny open pits from June 15, and at alluvial deposits in the Anabar River valley - Khara-Mas and Ochuos, operated by Alrosa's subsidiary Almazy Anabara - from April 1.
Alrosa did not specify how long the suspensions would last. The mines jointly account for 3 per cent of the company's production. The impact will not be clear until 2026 because diamond-bearing ore and sand already mined has yet to be processed.
According to Interfax, production at one of the affected mines, Verkhne-Munskoye, hit 2.3m carats in 2021, as it processed accumulated ore from the COVID closure. Alrosa has not published detailed operational data since US sanctions were introduced in 2022.
Pic of Verkhne-Munskoye, courtesy Alrosa.