Overview and Strategy

Arctic Canadian owns and operates the Ekati Diamond Mine, located in Canada’s Northwest Territories. In addition to our mine assets, we have established productive, long-term relationships with local communities and Indigenous organizations in the North. The Ekati Mine provides a steady and reliable supply of rough diamonds that are highly prized in the world’s markets for their Canadian origin and desirable quality mix.

Currently the Ekati Mine property consists of 122 mining leases totaling about 113,485 hectares.

Click on the interactive map to learn about our projects.

Sable

Sable Open Pit

The Sable pipe was discovered in 1996. Since 2018, the Sable open pit has produced over 2 million carats. Mining is proceeding at a rate of approximately 2 million tonnes per month (ore plus waste) and open pit mining is expected to be completed in Sable pit by the third quarter of 2024.

Ekati Main Camp

Ekati Main Camp

First opened in 1998. The camp includes individual private bedrooms, a full-service dining room, on-site concession store, laundry room, and a fully equipped gym with a wide range of cardio and weight equipment, as well as a running track and squash courts.

Long Lake Containment Facility

Long Lake Containment Facility

Crushed and washed kimberlite generated during processing is separated at the process plant and the fine fraction is sent to the Long Lake Containment Facility by slurry pipeline. Components at the Long Lake Containment Facility include five containment cells, three filter dikes, the outlet dam, access roads and pipelines. A revegetation research project has been ongoing at this site since 2014, with encouraging results achieved to date.

Fox

Fox Open Pit

The Fox pipe was the second pipe discovered at Ekati in 1992. It is a very large pipe and was mined as an open pit from 2004 to 2015. More than 8 million carats were recovered from the open pit mine. The deeper portion of Fox could be developed as an underground mine or through underwater remote mining methods.

Point Lake

Point Lake

The Point Lake pipe was the first diamondiferous pipe discovered in the Northwest Territories in 1991. The Point Lake open pit project is currently under development after receiving permit approvals in May of 2022. Phase 1 of the lake dewatering was completed in the summer of 2022, with the remainder of the dewatering and initial overburden and waste rock stripping scheduled to commence in 2023.

Misery Camp

Misery Camp

First opened in 2001 and expanded in 2015 to support continuation of open pit mining. The camp includes individual private bedrooms, a full-service dining room and a fully equipped gym. It now serves as the lodging accommodations for all the workers at Misery Underground Mine. Misery Camp is about a 45 minute drive from the Ekati Main Camp.

Lynx

Lynx Open Pit

Lynx is a small open pit mine located south of Misery. It operated from 2017 to 2019 and produced just under one million carats. An underwater remote mining production trial is slated at Lynx in summer 2025.

Misery Underground

Misery Underground

The Misery pipe was initially mined as an open pit and produced over 27 million carats including special highly sought-after fancy yellow stones. The mine was converted to an underground operation in 2019 and achieved commercial production in 2021. More than 3 million carats have been produced from the underground mine to date.

Winter Road

Winter Road

The Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road is 475 km long and 86 percent of it is constructed across lakes. The road connects by a permanent all-weather road east of Yellowknife to the Ekati Main Camp, via the Misery haulage road. Typically, the winter road is open from early February to late March, with exact dates fluctuating from year to year based on weather conditions.

Timeline for mining operations at the Ekati Diamond Mine

Projects

Pigeon open pit
Sable open pit
Misery Underground Mine
Point Lake Open Pit

Currently mined and under development projects. Mining at Pigeon open pit was completed in April 2022.

Timeline for mining operations at the Ekati Diamond Mine

Currently mined and under development projects. Mining at Pigeon open pit was completed in April 2022.

Point Lake Project

Our Point Lake Project is located about three kilometers North East of Misery Underground Mine camp. The Point Lake open pit is in the development stage with mining operations slated to commence in 2023. Permitting approval was received in May 2021 and the access road and utility pad have been constructed and the fish out and Phase 1 dewatering of the lake have been completed. The next steps involve the completion of the dewatering, construction of the waste rock storage area pads followed by the pre-stripping of overburden prior to the commencement of full scale mining.

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Underwater Remote Mining

Ekati’s long term future is based on innovative underwater remote mining (URM) within completed open pits such as Sable, Fox and Point Lake. Arctic Canadian and IHC Mining started their cooperation in 2018 to jointly develop an innovative and integrated mining solution. The starting point for the development of the underwater remote mining system was to economically extract kimberlite from marginal kimberlite pipes and from deep extents of completed open pits. An important focus was to develop a mining solution that would have a much lower environmental impact than conventional mining methods. As the URM crawler is only mining the kimberlite ore and minimal waste, it significantly reduces the mine’s footprint. The URM solution could allow the Ekati Diamond Mine to extend its lifetime by at least 10 years.

The Underwater Remote Mining System

The URM system consists of a floating platform, an underwater mining crawler and a land based dewatering plant. Arctic Canadian has now awarded IHC Mining with a contract to build and deliver a Launch and Recovery Platform for the URM system. This contract is the first major equipment scope being awarded by Arctic Canadian for the URM system, following years of development work. Construction of the floating platform was completed in late 2022 and construction of the mining crawler is in progress.

The Mining Crawler

Once the floating platform is complete, construction and testing of the mining crawler will begin. The dewatering plant and slurry lines will then be constructed and assembled on site. The mining crawler consist of four tracks, independent suspension and steering, centrally placed drum cutter, ancillary cutter (for kimberlite along pipe contacts), high efficiency dredge pump, submerged hydraulics with biodegradable oil. The machine will be operated remotely.

A technological breakthrough for kimberlite diamond mining

The URM solution is a technological breakthrough for kimberlite diamond mining. A new innovative solution which originated from deep sea mining and trenching systems has allowed Arctic and IHC Mining to take the next step in the future of diamond-bearing kimberlite mining.

The various components of the URM system will be tested step by step with a production trial at the mined-out Lynx open pit prior to moving on to larger depleted open pits. The first step is flooding of the Lynx pit in summer of 2023. This will be followed by testing of the Launch and Recovery Platform in summer 2024 and then by comprehensive URM system testing in summer 2025, including a trial mining operation targeting the extraction of approximately 180,000 tonnes of Lynx kimberlite ore.