De Beers may close Snap Lake diamond mine in Canada

De Beers Canada, a unit of Anglo American, said closure is one of the options being considered for the mine in the Northwest Territories 

De Beers, the renowned diamond producer of the world, has been considering to close down the Snap Lake Diamond mine in Northwest territories, which have been operational since year 2008, but never turned profitable. 

It may be recalled that Snap Lake was the firm's first diamond mine outside of Africa, and Canada’s first primary underground diamond mine. The mine employs 747 workers and produced 1.2 million carats last year and was scheduled to stay in production for another 12 years. 

As De Beers spokesman Tom Ormsby told Reuters, “Any time these scenarios come forward, where the cycle is challenging, everything's on the table and everything's looked at including the option of what would we do if we had to go into any kind of a care and maintenance or closure situation.”