De Beers releases its sixth Report to Society

In its sixth annual Report to Society named ‘Living up to Diamonds’, De Beers has identified its approach to managing sustainability issues, and its efforts towards the same last year in 2010. Narrating this approach of the company, Nicky Oppenheimer, Chairman of De Beers, says “In engaging with the challenges of operating in this new global economy, our commitment to live up to the emotional promise of the product we sell has, if anything, been reaffirmed. The success of our business, and its future growth, depends on our ability to create shared value with our producer partners, our local communities, our employees and our consumers.”

The Report has documented the efforts of the Family of Companies, and associated partners, in promoting growth and creating wealth and sustainable development in 2010 - %5 an increase in payments to stakeholders around the world to US$5.0 billion (2009: US$3.4 billion) with the impetus of a 34 percent increase in overall production

Increased rough diamond supplies to supplies to Sightholders for manufacture in southern Africa from US$579 million in 2009 to US$1.12 billion in 2010

Disbursed a total of US$29.8 million in community social investment, including contractually mandated initiatives and in-kind contributions. This amounts to 3.3 percent of pre-tax profits of US$894 million and is significantly in excess of the international benchmark of 1 percent

The Family of Companies continued to provide Anti–Retroviral Treatment to a total of 1,652 employees and their partners in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa

Use of reused and recycled water at our southern African mines remained constant at 50 percent of our total freshwater footprint. In 2010 we used 38.09 million m³ of new (potable and non-potable) water across all our operations ( a 63 percent y-o-y increase, mainly due to a 34 percent increase in production in 2010, following the global financial crisis in 2009

The Diamond Route, a cross-provincial, nine-site tourism route across southern Africa, won the prestigious Nedbank Capital Green Mining Award in the Sustainability category in 2010.