OREANDA-NEWS. March 24, 2010. By resolution of the OJSC Severalmaz General Meeting of Shareholders Sergey Anatolyevich Gerasimov, formerly a director of the Catoca Ltd. joint venture in Angola, was appointed President of OJSC Severalmaz.

Sergey Gerasimov was born in 1951. He is a highly skilled and experienced mining engineer. He had worked at ALROSA mines in Udachny and Mirny in different positions, from mine foreman to deputy director of the Udachny Mining & Processing Division. As Director for Production of Catoca Ltd. he headed the Russian team at Catoca for eight years and made an important contribution into building and developing the technical potential of Angola’s largest diamond mine.

The appointment of a new CEO has been dictated by a need to implement into practice a new development strategy of OJSC Severalmaz approved by ALROSA in February 2010. It provides for bringing up the Lomonosov Mine processing capacity to 4.0 m tons of ore per annum and attaining the design production capacity in Q1 2015. For the development of the Arkhangelskaya and Karpinskogo-1 pipes ALROSA plans to build another processing facility at the Lomonosov. One of the reasons for the appointment as CEO of Severalmaz of a qualified mining engineer with experience in bringing into operation new large-scale production facilities is an intention to find a large strategic investor for this project.