n Australian mining company wants to start diamond mining on a large scale in the Skeleton Coast Park. It has been searching for diamonds along the Skeleton Coast for a couple of years up to the Kunene Mouth, one of the world’s most breathtaking nature hotspots. The Skeleton Coast diamond projects of Reefton Mining consist of 3 Exclusive Prospecting Licences (EPL’s) located at Henties Bay, Möwe Bay and Cape Frio. The total length of coastline covered by the diamond deposits is 220 kilometres. Reefton started investigations with engineering consultants to assess the capital and operating costs to move one million tonnes of soil per annum to process the diamondiferous beach sand and gravels. This according to experts in nature conservation circles will be the death of the sensitive ecology at the Skeleton Coast Nature Park. - The extraordinary diamond bearing beach deposits of the West Coast of Africa extending from Namaqualand, through Namibia and Angola to the Congo are renowned for the quality and quantity of their diamonds. "So far, high quality diamonds of up to 2.3 carats were found along the entire 50 kilometres of Namibia’s northern beaches explored to date", Reefton announced last week. The beaches explored comprise only a small segment of the 310 kilometre long belt of prospective coastline held under concession by the company. Up to now, 590 diamonds were recovered (totalling 63.76 carats) averaging 0.24 carats from 467 tonnes of fossil beach concentrate, according to the Australian mining company. The company has started to recruit suitably qualified and experienced professionals to plan for, and implement, an evaluation and development strategy and the production of a conceptual mine development plan.