HEADING WEST
De Beers announces plans to move its headquarters from Toronto to Calgary,
De Beers, one of the world’s largest diamond companies, is leaving Toronto and moving its Canadian headquarters to Calgary this June.
There are currently 80 to 120 people working at De Beers’s Toronto headquarters.
Many will be offered the chance to relocate, said Tom Ormsby, De Beers Canada’s director of external and corporate affairs.
“It is a Canadian-wide restructur- ing. It is company-wide,” Ormsby said.
“The bulk of the roles won’t change. The roles lost are more of the support side of things and we haven’t got a final number,” Ormsby said.
De Beers employs about 1,000 people in Canada and plans on growing as its third mine readies for opening, he said.
Minister of Northern Development and Mines Michael Gravelle said the move is a business decision, but he’s pleased it will not affect the Timmins office or production and technical personnel at the Victor Mine, Gravelle said in an emailed statement to the Star.
The open-pit Victor diamond mine, De Beers’s first diamond mine in Northern Ontario, is reaching the end of its lifespan in four years.
Victor has a surface area of 15 hectares and produces about 600,000 carats of diamonds a year. The Ontario diamonds are particularly sought-after for their clarity.
The Calgary move will happen in the second half of next year, just as De Beers’s new Gahcho Kué mine comes online, Ormsby said.
Gahcho Kué is at Kennady Lake, about 280 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife and 80 kilometres southeast of De Beers’s Snap Lake Mine in the Northwest Territories.
De Beers is trying to get federal approval for an extension of the Vic-
“The roles lost are more on the support side of things and we haven’t got a final number.” TOM ORMSBY DIRECTOR OF CORPORATE AFFAIRS, DE BEERS
tor mine, called Tango, located about seven kilometres away from Victor.
“The Tango extension — provided advanced exploration confirms an economically viable deposit — that, with necessary approvals, could extend the life of the project beyond 2018,” Gravelle said.
“We are proud of Ontario’s competitive business climate and pleased that De Beers continues to signal their interest and intention to continue doing business in Ontario,” he added.
The opening of Victor was lauded by the provincial government of former premier Dalton McGuinty. De Beers even gifted some of the first diamonds to be pulled out of Ontario’s North to adorn the mace that sits in the Ontario Legislature.
De Beers is still actively exploring in Northern Ontario for new mining sites. Last Tuesday, a De Beers exploration team held a meeting in Weenusk First Nation, on the southern shore of Hudson Bay, asking for community support to explore on Cree traditional land.