Gem Diamonds appears to have cracked the problem of extracting diamonds from deposits deep beneath the Kalahari GEM Diamonds appears to have cracked the problem of extracting diamonds from deposits deep beneath the Kalahari. It has found a way to burrow relatively cheaply below the loose sands that have made it an expensive and difficult exercise in the past.CE Clifford Elphick says Gem is developing one of the world’s few new diamond mines, Ghaghoo in the southeast portion of Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve.Elphick concedes that the mine is not the “dripping roast” that the Jwaneng deposit is, referring to the world’s richest diamond mine, owned jointly by De Beers and the Botswana government.Jwaneng is in south-central Botswana, about 120km west of Gaborone, in the Naledi river valley of the Kalahari.Nevertheless, Ghaghoo has made important inroads into the challenge of building a mine through 80m of sand, Elphick says.The first phase of the Ghaghoo project was built for ...
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