The past three years for Firestone Diamonds CEO Stuart Brown have been very different from his previous career as CFO, and later joint acting CEO, of the giant De Beers Group.This month Firestone will produce its first diamonds from commercial, as opposed to trial, mining operations at Liqhobong in Lesotho.Since he joined the company, Brown has been watching the purse strings and has been fully involved in all aspects of bringing the project to fruition. At De Beers, there were big budgets, plenty of staff and decision making took far longer than a small company can afford.Liqhobong is in northern Lesotho, near Gem Diamonds’ Letseng mine, which is famous for producing special, large stones, such as the 198-carat white diamond found last year. Before the latest investment, Liqhobong was also finding large stones, but its processing systems were not designed to accommodate them and at least 10 were crushed.Brown says the occurrence of exceptional stones is impossible to predict. The e...
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