Diamond miner studying underground mine in Lesotho as the company keeps a tight grip on its purse strings GEM Diamonds is studying an underground mine at its Letseng operation in Lesotho as the company keeps a tight grip on its purse strings in a volatile time for the diamond market.Letseng is the only operating asset within London-listed Gem. The company is building a second mine in Botswana called Ghaghoo, which will begin production next year.During the past year, Gem has disposed of its Ellendale mine in Australia due to its limited life. Gem has also ended work at the Chiri project in Angola, where unfavourable participation terms meant the company would not yield favourable economic returns, CEO Clifford Elphick said on Tuesday.Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Angola’s state-owned Endiama diamond mining company was talking about bringing the Chiri project into production later this year or early next year. Gem has spent $14.8m at Chiri and has written this amount off. It loa...
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