By the time a mine reaches middle age, it must decide whether to fade, rest on its earlier glories, or take on a harder task: re-making itself for another generation. Orapa has chosen the harder road.
The pit by the pans began life in an era when resolve could still outrun complexity. De Beers put down R21.5 million, and from there an iconic mine morphed. On 1 July 1971 the plant thrummed, and the first year’s production reached 821,914 carats. Plans for 1972 spoke in the simple future tense: 2.3 million tonnes of production would yield about 2.4 million carats.
Half a century on, the verbs are different. The rocks are deeper, the wall angles steeper , the tailings finer , the scrutiny closer . Cut 3 is not a ribbon and a speech. It is a long pushback, a shaping of benches and berms, a choreography of waste and ore that must extend the mine’s life into the 2050s while meeting the demands of investors, regulators, environmentalists, and the market.
“We have not suspended Cut 3,” Orapa General Manager Mogakolodi Maoketsa says plainly in written responses to Projects Magazine. “Timelines are continuously reviewed in line with the diamond market,” with preparations for commissioning “to begin in 2027.” First diamond sales from Cut 3 are “anticipated around 2034.”
Those dates matter because they draw a bridge from the mine’s first half-century to its second. Early industry reporting suggested Cut 3 could keep Orapa working to about 2055, an estimate later echoed in Debswana materials that speak of studies looking at a Cut 3 pushback that will add to the life of the mine. The company’s stance today remains calibrated to market reality, with feasibility underway, pace is deliberate, and major steps will follow demand rather than lead it.
Already, austerity measures are being implemented with “production reduction to align with current demand,” Maoketsa notes, alongside cost discipline, project deferrals, and efficiency drives. These have been part of OLDM’s toolkit through the present down-cycle. What, then, does it take to deliver a pushback of this scale in our time?
First, patience and geometry. Cut 3 is about widening and deepening the current pit to unlock the next shell of ore. Pushbacks consume vast volumes of waste before the value turns. Modern open-pit design must carry not only geotechnical certainty but also water stewardship, dust, noise, and biodiversity plans that live in the same schedule as the shovels.
Second, processing discipline. Orapa’s capacity leap at the turn of the millennium, marked by Orapa 2000 and the commissioning of the No. 2 Process Plant, taught the site to think in decades rather than quarters. Plant 1 has since been retired at end of life, with Plant 2 carrying the load.
Third, residue done right. OLDM has been building a multi-cell fines facility to handle the slimes that come with modern recovery, part of the quiet engineering that allows a long pushback to proceed without building tomorrow’s problem at today’s speed.
It helps to remember how far the starting line has moved. In the early seventies the pit sat in open country, and a single decision could push a project from bush to production. De Beers’ loan for the road and telephone lines, the temporary boreholes, and the permanent Mopipi scheme that drew water from the Okavango via the Boteti and pushed it roughly 64 kilometres to site were remarkable feats for a new nation.
But they were small-team feats, the kind that a tight circle of engineers and administrators could still push through the system.
Cut 3 lives in a different century. Debswana today must fit every step into a lattice of ESG commitments and national expectations. OLDM has already begun shifting its energy and mobility profile: solar on-site infrastructure, trials of electric and hybrid vehicles, premium-efficiency motors, LED conversions, and studies into rolley assist, battery-electric fleets, and cleaner fuels. The intent is simple enough to state “progress toward net zero by 2030” and complex enough to require hundreds of small technical choices that accumulate into real change.
There is also the question of cost. Debswana has not published a final capital expenditure figure for Cut 3, at least not in the public domain. Official materials emphasize timing and life-of-mine impact rather than a headline budget, a sensible position while feasibility is still running and market conditions remain fluid. For our purposes, the comparison that tells the story is not a pula number. It is the contrast between two eras: R21.5 million and eighteen months to first ore in 1971, versus a multi-year, ESG-bound, digitally instrumented pushback that threads Orapa through the 2030s and into the 2050s.
The human frame matters as well. OLDM is now the operating center of a wider district economy that expects the mine to think beyond the gate. Community investment, supplier development, and the “Orapa Today and Boteti Tomorrow” program exist not as afterthoughts but as operating conditions. That is the world in which Cut 3 must be built.
Maoketsa’s closing note brings the engineer’s voice back into the lyric. Cut 3 is “a strategic initiative by Debswana Diamond Company to extend the life of Orapa,” he notes. The mine will be widened and deepened “to access additional diamond-bearing ore,” and the timing will be set “in line with the diamond market.” None of the sentences ask for applause. They read like instructions pinned to a workshop wall, and that is the right tone for a pushback that must carry a town, a district, and a national story forward.
