De Beers to pause Venetia mine production for two years

De Beers Group has announced plans to suspend accumulation astatine its Venetia diamond excavation successful Limpopo, South Africa, for 2 years arsenic portion of efforts to chopped costs and reconsider superior spending.

The intermission volition let for captious infrastructure concern aimed astatine improving the mine's capableness and efficiency, supporting aboriginal accumulation maturation erstwhile concern and manufacture conditions improve.

The Venetia excavation produced 2.2 cardinal carats successful 2025 and employed astir 4,400 radical successful 2026.

Production from the $2.3bn (£1.72bn) underground installation began successful July 2023, pursuing the extremity of 3 decades of open-pit mining successful December 2022.

This determination astatine Venetia follows a erstwhile determination earlier successful the twelvemonth to intermission the Tuzo signifier 3 enlargement astatine the Gahcho Kué excavation successful Canada.

Alongside changes astatine its mines, the institution is besides looking to reconfigure its planetary operating exemplary to prioritise spending connected halfway concern areas and trim cardinal firm costs.

Founded successful 1888, De Beers Group has operating mines successful Botswana, Canada, Namibia and South Africa. It is simply a subordinate of Anglo American.

The institution besides offers a wide scope of manufacture services, including acquisition programmes, laboratory analysis, and assorted technologies for sorting, detecting and classifying diamonds.

De Beers Group CEO Al Cook said: "In enactment with our committedness to absorption and streamline our business, we are making a fig of changes to De Beers to guarantee greater concern resilience successful the near-term, portion supporting semipermanent worth creation.

"We recognise the protracted challenging conditions arsenic the diamond manufacture evolves, though we are encouraged by signs of user request maturation successful the US and beyond, peculiarly successful higher-quality diamonds."

In October 2025, Angola projected to get Anglo American's 85% involvement successful De Beers, competing with different funny parties specified arsenic Botswana. However, by February 2026, Angola negotiated to get a smaller involvement of 20–30%.

"De Beers to intermission Venetia excavation accumulation for 2 years" was primitively created and published by Mining Technology, a GlobalData owned brand.