Lucara’s Karowe lateral development to Group R: access design notes for mine planners
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
Lucara Diamond Corp has awarded Group R Mining and Exploration Botswana the lateral development contract for the Karowe underground project, covering all horizontal access from the production and ventilation shafts to the orebody. The scope includes excavation of primary and secondary development drives, connection of the two main shafts, and construction of associated ore-handling and ventilation infrastructure. For geotechnical and mine planning teams, the award signals progression from shaft sinking to full underground access development at Karowe’s high-value diamond orebody in Botswana.
Technical Brief
- Single contractor model for all horizontal access simplifies interface risk between excavation and services installation.
- Award signals transition from shaft-sinking focus to development mining, with geotech support designs now critical.
- For other deep kimberlite projects, bundling lateral access, ore-handling and ventilation into one EPC-style package is becoming more common.
Our Take
Diamond pieces in our database this year are dominated by market, governance and corporate leadership themes (such as the Petra Diamonds joint-CEO appointment and Kimberley Process reform), so a project-focused item on Lucara’s Karowe underground project stands out as one of the few operational growth stories in the segment.
With Petra Diamonds concentrating on management restructuring and the World Diamond Council tied up in stalled reform debates, Lucara’s move to advance the Karowe UGP suggests it is positioning for future high-value diamond supply while many peers are more occupied with corporate or regulatory issues than with new underground development.
Among the 137 Mining stories and 313 tag-matched pieces in our coverage, there are only several keyword-matched pieces on diamond, indicating that substantial underground project work like Karowe UGP is relatively scarce compared with activity in bulk commodities, which may give Lucara a differentiated production profile once the underground comes online.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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