De Beers to sell the Kimberley mine where it began 125 years ago

It hasn’t been a great year for the late Cecil John Rhodes. The company he started, De Beers, today announced that it is offloading the operation where it all began a century and a half after Kimberley’s diamonds briefly made it the centre of global wealth creation. De Beers was founded in 1888, less than a decade after the Zulu and first Anglo Boer Wars, through Rhodes’s consolidation of diamond digging claims in what was to become Kimberley’s Big Hole. Mining stopped some years ago, but the company had been working old tailings to recover diamonds left behind by the old timers. De Beers won’t be abandoning Kimberley – it intends keeping its diamond sales operation in the city.  – Alec Hogg

By John Bowker and Thomas Biesheuvel, Bloomberg

De BeersDe Beers put its Kimberley Mines in South Africa up for sale – more than 125 years after the world’s biggest diamond producer took control of the operation under British imperialist Cecil Rhodes.

The operating life of the mine, where De Beers is searching for diamonds among previously extracted rock, expires in 2018 and could be extended into the next decade under a new owner, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

De Beers, 85 percent owned by London-based Anglo American Plc, will take expressions of interest and plans to complete a sale within months, it said.

“We are keen to offer the mine as a going concern to facilitate a greater degree of job security,” Phillip Barton, chief executive of De Beers’ South African unit, said in the statement. “We are engaging fully with employees, union representatives and with government at national and other levels.”

Kimberley produced 722,000 carats of diamonds last year, making it De Beers’ biggest source of the gems in South Africa after the Venetia site in Limpopo province. The precious stones were first discovered near the town in 1871, about a mile away from the De Beers farm that would give its name to the former monopoly. De Beers gained full control of the mine in 1888.

The producer will retain properties and operations in the town of Kimberley, about 480 kilometers (298 miles) southwest of Johannesburg. These include sorting, financial services and ecology operations, a spokeswoman for the company said.

[box]SEE ALSO: De Beers reveals diamond secrets to woo investors, Nov 2014[/box]

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