Egbert klapwijk is the support manager at Star Diamonds. Star is not his sole responsibility but it is where he lives. Klapwijk is not the only Petra employee who splits his time between Star and the other mines in the group (Helam and Messina in South Africa), mine manager Enricho Irvia was at Messina mine when Mining Mirror (MM) visited. Klapwijk guided MM around the mine and spoke at length about the operations, the efforts to improve the mine and the mine's history. Star was founded in 1952 and its initial owner was Goidfields. It has subsequently changed hands a few times. It has spent several years where operations had been wound down and has been a work in progress since 1999, during which it belonged to Crown, which was taken over by exploration company Petra Diamonds in April/May 2005. Petra has big plans for Star, including a drastic increase in production targeted to peak at 72 000 ct/a in 2009. Production during the 2004 financial year was about 16 000 ct. It's clear that production will have to grow rapidly if the mine is to meet expectations.
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