A diamond is forever when we all work together, new De Beers Group CEO Al Cook opined sagaciously in his welcome address at the grand opening of De Beers’ Sightholder Sales South Africa at Sky Park, close to the OR Tambo International Airport. De Beers Sightholder Sales South Africa officially unveiled its new rough diamond sorting, valuation and sales facility on May 19 at an event attended by Mineral Resources and Energy the Minister Gwede Mantashe and Gauteng Economic Development MEC Tasneem Motara.
Like a diamond itself, diamond investment in South Africa is having a ‘forever’ tag pinned on its back as the world’s largest diamond company by value speaks glowingly of its $2-billion investment that is turning South Africa’s Limpopo province into one that hosts the world’s most advanced underground diamond mine, and how Gauteng province is progressively laying on sparkling local beneficiation consolidation in the promising Gauteng Industrial Development Zone. De Beers has been investing in South Africa since 1888 and Al Cook, the upbeat new CEO of the De Beers Group, stated unequivocally from the podium during the grand opening of the company’s latest diamond investment that the 135-year-old De Beers is not only honoured to still be “actively” investing in the future of South Africa, but that it is also doing so “confidently”.
De Beers, one of the largest diamond producers in the world, is confident talks with the Botswana government aimed at renewing its extraction partnership will yield a beneficial agreement for all parties.