Russian diamond producer Alrosa said on Monday that its rough and polished diamond sales totalled $35.8 million in July, down 79% from a year earlier after the coronavirus pandemic hit demand and the supply chain.
It marked a fourth consecutive month of weak sales as falling demand and supply chain disruptions since March have prompted Alrosa and other producers to reduce output and relax payment terms for clients.
Alrosa’s sales rose from $31.3 million in June but still were only a fraction of the usual sales of the world’s largest producer of rough diamonds. Its sales in July 2019 totalled $170.5 million.
The state-controlled firm has previously said that it was prepared for months of weak sales and that in coming months it will discuss with Russia’s finance ministry whether state precious metals and gems repository Gokhran could buy $0.5 billion-$1 billion of the firm’s rough diamonds.
The finance ministry is yet to take the final decision but is positive about the possibility of such a deal, the Kommersant newspaper reported on Monday, citing an unnamed source at the ministry.
Such a deal would help to improve the situation in the market, as it did in 2008-2009 when Gokhran bought diamonds worth $1 billion from Alrosa during the global financial crisis, the source told Kommersant.
Reporting by Polina Devitt – reuters
Russia’s Alrosa, the world’s top diamond producer by output, is temporarily suspending production at two assets as demand and sales for diamonds continues to drop.
Major consumers, including China and the United States, are struggling with economic headwinds caused by the global covid-19 pandemic. Extended lockdowns affecting key players in the supply chain, including polishers and top retailers, has only made things worse.
The Russian state-controlled miner said the dire state of the market would force it to halt its Aikhal underground mine and Zarya open pit from May 15 to September 30 and to December 30, respectively.
The two assets account for roughly 7% of the company’s diamond output in carat terms. They produced 2.6 million carats of rough diamonds last year.
Personnel of suspended operations and auxiliary services will be partially laid-off, Alrosa said. The remaining employees will be transferred to other assets or stay to keep up maintenance work at the idled operations.
The diamond giant said in March it may revise down its output guidance for 2020, which currently sits at 34.2 million carats. In 2019, it produced 38.5 million carats.
Source: mining.com
Russia-based diamond miner Alrosa produced eight-million carats of diamonds and sold 9.4-million carats in the first quarter of the year.
The company generated sales revenues of $904-million from rough and polished diamonds.
This was despite diamond production seasonally declining by 9% quarter-on-quarter, although year-on-year diamond production growth was 2%. The year-on-year growth was supported by increased production at the company’s Jubilee pipe, as well as at the Aikhal and international underground mines.
Alrosa says the average realised prices for gem-quality diamonds in the first quarter was $123/ct, which was down 17% quarter-on-quarter and flat year-on-year.
The company maintains its full-year production guidance of 34.2-million carats, but says sales volumes will depend on the Covid-19 epidemiological situation and respective measures taken globally.
Alrosa says the diamond industry started the year off in good shape as consumer sentiment had improved across key markets for diamond jewellery, while inventories at the midstream had normalised and polished diamond prices began to recover.
However, following closures of markets in China and Hong Kong in February, and then later in Europe and the US, demand started to weaken.
Alrosa says it might need to update its production and prices data during the year, depending on what happens in the market.
Source: miningweekly
Alrosa’s knack for recovering unusually shaped diamonds has scaled new heights with the discovery of a rough stone resembling a fish.
“In the photo, you see a very rare specimen: a rough-diamond crystal which pretends to be a fish,” the Russian miner wrote in an Instagram post Wednesday announcing the find.
As with its other similar hauls, Alrosa hooked the catch to a marketing goal, using the occasion to emphasize the care it takes to preserve sea life around its mines. Alrosa ecologists release “hundreds of thousands” of fish into rivers in Yakutia and its other mining regions every year, the company explained in the post. In October, it plans to introduce “valuable” broad whitefish into Siberian waters.
Last summer, the company unveiled a rough diamond resembling a soccer ball in the middle of the World Cup taking place in Russia, for which it was a sponsor. The company also found a stone that looked like a skull in time for Halloween, and stumbled upon a heart-shaped piece a few weeks before Valentine’s Day this year.
Source: diamonds.net
Alrosa has agreed to a joint venture with national miner Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC) for exploring new diamond projects in the country.
The deal, which provides Alrosa with a 70% stake in any new greenfield deposits, encompasses geological exploration, diamond mining and independent sales of rough stones to external markets, the Russian miner said Tuesday.
“We are committed to productive work in the exploration of new, promising areas and subsequent diamond mining,” explained Alrosa deputy CEO Vladimir Marchenko. “Our specialists have been working in Zimbabwe for more than three months now, and the national authorities have been of great support to them. We have chosen various projects for the joint venture, and part of [those] will be launched this autumn.”
The company is primarily considering areas located in the Chimanimani region of Zimbabwe, Marchenko noted, stressing that Alrosa did not plan any operations in Marange, despite recent reports indicating it was considering the move. Zimbabwe’s Marange fields were a source of contention, after state security forces killed nearly 200 citizens in 2008 in an effort to clamp down on informal mining, resulting in the country’s removal from the Kimberley Process (KP). The KP reinstated Zimbabwe in 2011, but US sanctions against Marange diamonds remain in place.
“Alrosa only explores and considers the feasibility [in] other parts of the country,” it said. “[The company] has never, and under no circumstances, considered, and won’t consider, the possibility of entering the Marange region.”
In December, the miner established Alrosa Zimbabwe Limited, an affiliate company that will oversee all projects in the country.
Source: Diamonds.net
