De Beers To Invest More Than $2 Million In Exploration In South Africa

(IDEX Online) – De Beers’ Phillip Barton announced the company will begin an extensive exploration program in South Africa, expecting to spend more than US$2 million.

Phillip Barton, head of South Africa’s De Beers Consolidated Mines (DBCM), said the company has been granted dozens of prospecting licenses across a number of provinces.

Already, DBCM has received approval for 19 exploration programs. Barton said DBCM is expecting to spend up to 30 million rand on prospecting in 2019 in the country.

Barton said that De Beers is looking at its own historical files of earlier exploration projects to determine what the most viable projects may be. Much of this data was gathered in the past around mines DBCM owns or used to own. He explained that the application of new technologies to old historical data of areas covered in the distant past may bring different results.

Therefore, Barton said, the prospecting will be mostly done in the Kimberley area, the Northern Cape and the Free State.