DE BEERS is using a 286-tonne machine to suck up diamonds from the seabed off the Namibian coastline. Over the past decade the company has advanced the technology that has saved its marine mining business, but which has come too late for its South African sea venture.De Beers Marine Namibia uses two machines, called the Green Crawler and the Orange Crawler, each more than four times heavier than a main battle tank, to suck diamonds out of sediment up to 6m thick in a 6,000km2 concession area south of Lüderitz.The crawlers, which are individually used at depths of about 150m, are rotated annually for maintenance in Cape Town.These are the third generation of the machines, which dwarf anybody standing next to them, and they extract 500,000 carats of diamonds a year, half of Namibia’s diamond production.But it is their efficiency and reliability that have been a key factor in saving the marine side of the De Beers business in Namibia — although they were unable to make mining off the S...
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