Alrosa investment committee approves 20 bln ruble expansion at Udachnaya pipe

MOSCOW. Sept 25 (Interfax) - The investment committee of Russian diamond miner Alrosa has approved a project to develop deep horizons of the Udachnaya diamond pipe in the Mirny district of Yakutia, the company said.

The project, which will cost an estimated 20 billion rubles, will extend the life of the deposit to at least 2055 with annual production of more than 4 million tonnes of diamond ore.

"The implementation of the investment project will enable us to significantly extend the duration of mining at the deposit, which currently produces more than 10% of Russian rough diamonds. From 2025 through 2055, 4.1 million tonnes of ore will be mined here annually and profit is estimated at almost 6 billion rubles per year," Alrosa CEO Pavel Marinychev said.

The Udachny underground mine, which went into operation in 2014 and reached design capacity in 2021, produced about 14% of Alrosa's diamonds in 2021, mining 4.4 million carats of the group's total 32.4 million carats. Alrosa has not published detailed mining data for more recent periods.

The approved project involves stripping and mining horizons at a depth of up to 1.13 km from the surface, to the absolute elevation of -780 meters (the surface elevation is +355 meters). Construction will proceed concurrently with the deepening of mine workings and continue until 2040. The company plans to conclude mining the deposit in 2055 at the earliest. The previous plan for the Udachnaya pipe called for finishing mining in 2039 at an elevation of -680 meters.

The project to mine deep horizons has received all the necessary approvals from state expert review office Glavgosexpertiza, and the feasibility study for it has been approved.

The deep horizons will be mined using established technology, which has proven to be efficient and safe, Alrosa said.

However, innovative mining technologies will also be widely used. The company is already actively testing various digital systems at the underground mine. For example, artificial intelligence is being used to monitor loading of mine dump trucks and the condition of the main conveyor that takes ore to the surface, and a system has been installed to remotely control hammers to break up oversized pieces of ore.

Open-pit mining at the Udachnaya pipe began in 1967. Alrosa opened the Fyodor Andreyev Udachny underground mine in 2014 to reach deeper horizons. The underground mine, which has more than 1,200 employees, is part of the Udachny mining and processing combine, the primary employer in the city of Udachny.

Reserves at the Udachnaya pipe have been explored to a depth of 1,635 meters from the surface.