Dominion Diamond Corporation has announced in a statement dated June 27 that surface and underground mining activities were not impacted by the fire that broke out at the Ekati diamond mine on June 23. The Company said that the Process Plant had been temporarily shut down, but clarified that there were no damages to main structural components during the incident.

It may be recalled that last week Dominion had reported that a fire broke out during a planned outage in the Process Plant but was quickly contained by the Company’s Emergency Response Team (ERT). All personnel were successfully evacuated and no injuries were reported.

The statement noted that the initial assessment of the process plant confirms damages were limited to a small area. Repairs will require the replacement of one of the main degritting screens and associated components, it added, as well as some electrical wiring and related infrastructure. The duration of the shutdown is still unknown and will be announced subsequently.

Dominion also said that ore mined during the process plant downtime will be stockpiled, with the intention to prioritise the processing of the highest value material when the plant restarts.