MINE SITES
RUSSIA-BASED ALROSA IS the world ’ s largest diamond mining company , enjoying over 60 years of diamond exploration , mining , manufacturing and sales . In July the company commenced with plans to end open-pit operations at the Udachnaya pipe , one of the oldest and largest diamond pipes in Yakutia , in order to transition operations underground .
The open-pit mine , which was established in 1971 , hit its peak in the early 1990s , producing more than half of the company ’ s rough diamonds with 12 million tons per year . At depths of more than 630 meters , the Udachny mine is one of the 10 deepest open-pit mines in the world .
From the very beginning The very first Yakut diamond was discovered in 1949 in the Soviet Union . It wasn ’ t until five years later on August 21 , 1954 , when geologist Larisa Popugaeva and Natalya Sarsadskikh discovered the first kimberlite pipe , Zarnitsa — ALROSA ’ s first primary diamond deposit . A year after the Zarnitsa discovery — and coincidentally two days after the unearthing of
The very first Yakut diamond was disc
the legendary Mir mine — young Soviet geologist Vladimir Shchukin found another potential deposit .
It was during exploration works that Shchukin found a fragment of metamorphic rock that usually undelays at depths of 2,000 meters . Typically , this rock can only be brought to the surface by kimberlite pipes — subterranean igneous rock structures best known as sources for diamonds . Shchukin immediately realized they were onto something big . “ We found two diamonds in first
14 October 2015