📋 Tender Overview
LOCATION Gauteng Province South AfricaScopeThe Cullinan diamond mine is located in the Gauteng province of South Africa. The site is situated 40km east of Pretoria in Cullinan. The diamond mine is also known as Premier mine. The open-pit mining at the Cullinan diamond mine began in 1903. It is one of the major sources of blue diamonds in the world. Petra Diamonds purchased a 37 stake in the mine from De Beers in 2008. The company increased this to 74 in 2009 by purchasing Al Rajhis shares. Petra Diamonds has planned for the expansion of the Cullinan diamond mine to increase the mines production from 920000 carats ct to 2.6 million carats Mct by 2019. The mine has a potential life of more than 50 years. The companys current mining plan will witness mining activities at the site until 2030. However the company expects the actual mine line to extend beyond 2030 based on residual resources at the mine. The Cullinan diamond mine is one of the worlds well-known producers of diamonds. The largest rough diamond gem of 3106ct was produced here. The acquisition of the mine led Petra Diamonds to discover world-class diamonds which includes a 39ct blue diamond a 26ct blue diamond and a 507ct white diamond. The mine has produced more than 350Mt of ore yielding nearly 120Mct of diamonds. It has reprocessed more than 75Mt of coarse tailings material and yielded 20Mct of diamonds. Production increased to 1655929ct from 1368720ct in FY 2018. The underground recovered run-of-mine grade increased from 35.9 carats per hundred tonnes cpht in FY 2018 to 38.6cpht in FY 2019 and it will remain between 38cpht to 42cpht in 2020. The production increase was supported by ROM throughput increasing from 3.7Mt to 4.1Mt during the period. Petra Diamonds has planned for a major expansion of the diamond mine. The C-Cut expansion plan includes the deepening of Shafts 1 and 3 related infrastructure to the shaft and planned level development to the Cullinan ore body. The 350m-deep existing shaft 1 will be deepened to 920m. It will lift up the ore and waste from the new C-Cut phase 1 block once the process of deepening completes. The 60m-deep existing shaft 3 will be deepened to 904m. It will take workers and material to and from the new C-Cut phase block 1. A new block cave will be opened in the C-Cut phase 1 of the Cullinan Kimberlite pipe. The C-Cut phase 1 area is located 200m below the existing operations. The new block will receive the C-Cut reserves. In FY 2020 the contribution from the C-Cut Phase 1 is expected to be 3.5Mt while an additional 0.7Mt will be obtained mainly from the CC1E and remnant B-Block areas. Murray Robert Cementation will be responsible for all engineering requirements. ABB will take the charge to upgrade the winder and ropes.
