Planned to be commissioned at the end of this month, the conveyor belt system has been planned to ramp-up the production from the Upper K4 (UK4) mining block, at the mine.
The system is designed to transport all future kimberlite and development waste mined at Lace to the surface, while reducing the cost per ton to load and haul rock.
The dump trucks, however, will be used by DiamondCorp to transport the kimberlite at a planned rate of up to 30,000t per month from the UK4 production level to the conveyor belt.
The company has doubled the conveyor belt capacity in a bid to ensure that expansion of production is not constrained by ore transport issue.
DiamondCorp said that the availability of processing water is major roadblock for the planned mining rate of 1,200,000t a year at the mine.
In order to adders this issue, the company plans to introduce an improved de-grit circuit and x-ray and/or optical waste sorting technology.
DiamondCorp expects the de-grit circuit, when used together with waste sorting technology, to have potential to increase the mining rate at the Lace deposit.
The firm has recovered around 4,250 carats of diamonds from bulk testing and development drives at the Lace mine, which is located 200km south-west of Johannesburg, near the town of Kroonstad in Free State Province.
