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Alrosa plans to increase diamond mining by 5% to 38.85 mln carats in 2017

This year the company aimed at mining 37 million carats

© Yuri Smityuk/TASS

MOSCOW, November 30. /TASS/. Alrosa plans to increase diamond mining by 5% in 2017 compared to the level of the current year, the company’s president Andrey Zharkov told Rossiya 24 TV channel in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

"The plans that we form today for 2017 envisage an approximately 5% increase in mining, if we are talking about the Alrosa company," Zharkov said.

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This year the company aimed at mining 37 million carats. Thus, in 2017 the volume of Alrosa’s mining may stand at 38.85 million carats.

In the next 2-3 years, the company expects world mining of diamonds to not increase by more than 10%, Zharkov noted.

Annual revenue from selling Alrosa’s diamonds in the framework of the Eurasian Diamond Center (EDC) in Vladivostok may reach $100-150 million, he continued. "The total volume of diamonds sold in the framework of the Eurasian Diamond Center may be worth $100-150 million," Zharkov said.

It was earlier reported that 500,000 small diamonds were sold at this platform for $5 million at the auction that ended last week.

The first action at the new platform in Vladivostok was held at the start of September, when the EDC was opened. The company then sold diamonds for a total of over $18 million.

Alrosa is involved in mining exploration, extraction, production and selling of diamonds. The company mines diamonds on the territory of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic and Arkhangelsk Region. In 2015, Alrosa mined 38.3 million carats, in January-September 2016 — 27.9 million carats. In the third quarter of 2016, the company sold 8.3 million carats for a total of $976 million.

The company’s shareholders include the Russian Federation represented by Rosimuschestvo (33.02%), the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic — 25%, Yakutia’s regions — 8%.

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