The cost of repairing Ekati’s process plant following last month’s fire is an estimated $25 million, according to Dominion Diamond Corporation.
On June 23, a fire caused damaged to a section of the diamond mine’s process plant during a planned outage.
The company says no injuries were reported and the blaze was extinguished the same day. Following a review, Dominion says it will take three months to make repairs at an estimated cost of $25 million.
During that time, approximately 330 employees and contractors are expected to be laid off while repairs are made.
Read: No injuries reported following fire at Ekati process plant
For the time being, mining activities have been suspended at the Pigeon and Lynx pits but are continuing at the Misery open pit and Koala underground.
All non-essential capital projects have been postponed until 2018.
“We continue to actively manage this situation, and have implemented a prudent strategy to minimize the impact of this incident on our cash flow,” said Brendan Bell, CEO of Dominion Diamond Corporation.
“We’ve planned mining activities to allow for the option to prioritize higher value ore sources on startup, thereby minimizing the impact on the value of our fiscal year production.”
