Karhu Mining Oy and Firestone Diamonds to Develop Europes First Diamond Mine

Finnish miners Karhu Mining Oy and British company Firestone Diamonds are to combine their efforts in a bid to open Europe’s first ever diamond mine.

The site in question is a four-hectare open-pit mine at Lahtojoki which is 30 kilometres east of the city of Kuopio, eastern Finland, with an eight-year operating project earmarked.

With production aimed to start in the second year, the mine will process about 600,000 tonnes of ore from a total annual extraction of 1.9 million tonnes.

According to the Finnish broadcasting corporation Yle, Karhu Mining has applied for a mining patent survey from the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency Tukes, which is the first step in the process to open a new mine.

Knowledge of Finnish diamonds became widespread in the late 1980s when the largest diamond found measured 4.3mm in diameter. In 2005 Kahru Mining extracted a 2000 tonne sample from the Lahtojoki region and processed half of them at a laboratory owned by the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK).

GTK says that other companies have also been involved in the diamond exploration business in Finland since the discoveries in the 1980s.

These include Ashton Mining Ltd, RTZ Mining & Exploration Ltd, Finsearch Oy ( De Beers), Glenmore Highlands Inc. (ASE), Conroy P.l.c., North Star Diamonds A.S. (Poplar Resources Inc., VSE), Baltic Minerals Finland Oy, America Mineral Fields Inc. (TSE) and Archangel Diamond Corp.

The relative success of the above companies’ exploration has not been disclosed.

However, Finland’s diamond potential was hinted at by Karelian Diamond Resources in December 2013 after its share price soared amid its belief in finding a major diamond-rich volcanic pipe in the country.