As a child I used to spend time in my nans garden digging amongst the flowers hoping to come across some sort of treasure. I would often find bits of pottery and the odd shiny bit of glass but nothing worthy of hiding from the likes of Captain Hook! It wasn’t until many years later after watching Blocked Drains Bristol company https://www.amsdrains.co.uk/ sorting out the drainage at my parents house that I found out I wasn’t digging deep enough, because way below our feet are riches we can only dream of.

Diamonds are found in the depths of many mines across the globe. The largest proportion of those being found in Russia with African and Australian mines also being on the list.

Here are the mines that produced the most diamonds in 2016.

• Jwaneng – This mine is located in Botswana and produced 11,975,000 carats worth of diamonds which is worth around $2,347 million. The mine itself is two kilometres wide and 300 tonne truck work on the site travelling up and down to the mines entrance. Jwaneng first opened in 1982 and it is thought that diamonds had a large part to play in rising Botswana from one of the poorest nations in Africa to now one of the wealthiest. As a result of the amount of diamonds mined each year Jwaneng has been nicknamed ‘The Prince of Mines’.

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• Jubilee – Locate din Russia this mine is owned by Alrosa which is the Russian states own diamond company It has been open since 1989 and if you take area into consideration it is by far the biggest diamond mine in the world. It produced 9,231,000 carats of diamonds, worth around $1,431 million.
• Internatsionalny – also located in Russia. This is an underground mine, meaning that it mines at depths not possibly through an open-pit mining system and has been open since 1999. It is thought that it will run out of diamond deposits by 2022. It produced 3,948,000 carats of diamonds worth around $829 million
• Orapa – This is Botswana’s largest producing mine, It is actually the largest mine if you are looking at area and is ninth on the list of reserve size. It has been open since 1971 and is jointly owned by De Beers and the government in Botswana. The mine operates at 250 metres below the surface and will eventually reach 450 metres by 2026. It produced 7,931,000 carats of diamonds worth an estimated $753 million.

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Now I definitely wasn’t digging deep enough!