If you’ve been following our blog, you’ve probably seen the country of South Africa mentioned many times. There’s a good reason for this, as the northern section of South Africa is home to some of the best diamond mines in the world. Many of the famous gemstones you’ve seen referenced have come from the region, but today we’re going to look at one mining facility in particular.
South of Botswana on the border of South Africa in the Naledi River Valley is an enormous game park called the Jwana Game Park. Bordering that is the location we’ll take a look at today, the Jwaneng Mine.
Known as the deepest diamond mine in the world, an astonishing amount of diamonds are pulled from this mine every year. In fact, the mine runs so deep that the atmospheric pressure is noticeably different at the bottom, which is just under half a mile deep.
A few facts about Jwaneng Mine:
- It has a depth of 625 meters
- The surrounding area and game park consists of over 1,700 animals
- In terms of volume, around 11 Million carats of diamonds are mined each year
- It’s an open pit mine, which is inherently less risky due to the lack of mining tunnels
- In total, the mine covers 520,000 Square Meters of space
- Jwaneng has won multiple international safety awards and is considered one of the safest mines in the world
Having begun operations in 1982, this mine works by cutting concentric circles deeper and deeper into the ground. The circles scale in size and get smaller as you go down to create a stable environment.
With over 2,100 employees and the largest diamond-related revenue per year of any mine, other diamond mines have also started heavily adopting practices from Jwaneng as their protocols and processes are considered the most efficient and effective in the industry by many.