The Argyle Diamond Mine

The Argyle Diamond mine, located in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia, is the largest producer of diamonds in the world by volume.

Diamonds were first found in the Argyle mine region in the 70’s. Traditionally diamonds are found in kimberlite ore, but diamonds found here were located in lamproite ore. Argyle has an open pit mine. The main diamond pipeline was named AK1 which stands for Argyle Kimberlite 1. This was prior to the discovery that the diamonds were actually contained in lamproite rather than kimberlite. This open mine pit is expected to be depleted by 2008.

Work has begun now on an underground mine which would be located beneath the original mine floor. Once completed, the underground mine tunnel should allow the Argyle mine to stay open until approximately 2018. However, once operations move from open pit mining to underground mining the diamond production will drop by almost fifty percent.

Argyle operates its own processing plant which runs twenty-four hours a day. Argyle typically extracts 25 to 30 million carats of diamonds a year.

Argyle mines employs over 500 workers. The mine is located in a remote area and has living quarters for the employees who typically work in two week alternating shifts.

A large amount of the quality diamonds produced by Argyle are brown diamonds which typically do not bring a large profit. Argyle’s highest income producing diamonds are their pink and red diamonds. Over 90% of the pink and red diamonds in the world come from Argyle. Despite this, less than 1% of diamonds mined from Argyle are pink or red.