Diavik’s closing. Ekati’s in trouble. What about Gahcho Kué?

The NWT’s three active diamond mines form the heartbeat of its economy. Diavik will close for sure in March 2026. Ekati is in real financial trouble. So how’s the third one, Gahcho Kué, doing?

De Beers, which operates Gahcho Kué, declined a recent interview request to discuss the mine’s current status and its future.

However, mine general manager Kevin Gostlin appeared at the Yellowknife Geoscience Forum to deliver an update on Wednesday.

The message? Gahcho Kué plans to be around until 2031. And while conditions are tough, staff are “doing everything we can” to keep the mine operating.

Here’s a breakdown of what’s happening at Gahcho Kué, what’s next, and who is affected.

What’s the mine’s status?

Mining at Gahcho Kué’s Hearne and 5034 open pits ended in 2024, Gostlin said. Most of 2025 has been spent mining through waste rock to get to the next focus: the appropriately named Nex ore body.

Nex is important for Gahcho Kue’s immediate future. We’ll return to that in a moment.

Like other diamond mines, Gahcho Kué is being hit by a depressed market for natural diamonds. The rise of lab-grown diamonds is one factor. Another is US tariffs on India, where most diamonds are sent for polishing.

Gahcho Kué is 51-percent owned by De Beers with the remainder owned by Mountain Province Diamonds. Mountain Province has reported a $128-million loss for the first nine months of 2025, its worst financial result for this time of year in at least a decade.

“I know there’s a lot of concern with the market right now,” said Gostlin. “People ask me all the time: how’s Gahcho Kué doing?”

“We’re doing everything we can to invest in our future, to manage the things that we control,” he added.

What does the future look like?

Assuming the market remains robust enough, Gahcho Kué bosses expect mining to stop in or around 2030 and processing of kimberlite ore to continue into 2031.

“2031 is still our our life-of mine and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that’s successful,” said Gostlin.

Attempting to reassure his geoscience forum audience that Gahcho Kué doesn’t foresee imminent closure, he pointed to things happening at the site – in the tundra northeast of Yellowknife – that he said wouldn’t happen if managers expected the end to come soon.

“We’re spending money today that is not necessary if we are closing in six months or 12 months. It’ll help us in 2027, 2028 or 2029,” he said. As an example, he pointed to a 5G network set up at Gahcho Kué in the past few months “to transmit data around the property.”

“A hundred times more data is being transmitted. That’s so important for us if we want to be efficient,” he said. “That is a pure investment in the future.”

Where does Nex fit in?

Gahcho Kué’s production figures are down significantly this year and Mountain Province’s financial results (alongside a change of leadership) paint a troubling picture.

But Gostlin said part of the the mine’s comparative lack of productivity in 2025 has been getting through waste rock to reach the Nex ore body, which wasn’t part of the Gahcho Kué plan until being discovered in 2018.

Workers reached Nex a month or two ago, he said, “and now we’re doing 100 percent of that Nex ore body through the process plant, which is taking our grade way up.”

A higher-grade product means more revenue. Nex is “helping with our cashflows in this really tight diamond market,” Gostlin said.

“We’re now into that really high-grade material. Even though carats are low relative to previous years, for three quarters of the year we were processing much lower-grade material. It may even be a record year next year.

“That’s really important for us, for maintaining our financial viability through these tough years here.”

Who works at Gahcho Kué?

Gostlin said Gahcho Kué has between 850 and 875 people working on the mine’s activities.

A recent snapshot of employment at Gahcho Kué produced a count of 632 De Beers staff and 245 contractors.

Of those, 297 were NWT residents and 172 were Indigenous people from the NWT.

Gahcho Kué has been trying to pick up workers from Diavik as that mine prepares to cease operations in March 2026, even attending Diavik’s own job fairs for its soon-departing workers.

What does Gahcho Kué mean to the NWT economy?

According to Gostlin, the mine’s spending for 2025 through the third quarter included $243.4 million in the NWT and $111.1 million outside the territory.

$91.3 million was spent with Indigenous-owned firms. Those figures are roughly the same as the mine’s spending a year earlier.

In 2024, Gahcho Kué documented $657,000 in “corporate social investment” – in other words, spending on community initiatives, sponsorships and the like.

Could the mine life be extended?

Ekati owner Burgundy has voiced an ambition to keep mining till 2040. Diavik owner Rio Tinto has been clear that Diavik is done in March 2026. Gahcho Kué’s opportunities to extend its life aren’t crystal clear.

The mine’s end date of 2031 is not as firm as the one Diavik is working toward. However, past ambitions to lengthen the mine life by going underground look unlikely to materialize.

“We’re not currently investing in that,” Gostlin said, asked by a geoscience forum attendee about a past study of the potential for underground mining at Gahcho Kué.

“We’re not spending money we don’t need to spend right now on that. That project looked possible a couple years ago and it was, ‘OK, we need a few things to work and if this happens then we can make a go of it.’ With the diamond market over the past two years, it’s a pretty hard no right now,” he continued.

“Right now, it is shelved.”

So after 2031 it’s just Ekati?

Even that might be optimistic. Ekati is waiting for a huge federal bailout under a plan devised by Ottawa to help firms in Canada hit by US tariffs. The long-term future of that mine is not clear.

The disappearance of at least two diamond mines in the next six years – and possibly all three – is a key reason why the NWT government is so keen to get major construction projects like the Arctic Economic and Security Corridor off the ground.

That work would create hundreds of jobs (at a time when mines will be shedding them) and open up new areas of the North for potential future mines.

Even so, the timeline for the corridor to be built and mines inspired by its presence to open is probably well over a decade, even if everything goes the way ministers and mining firms would like.

In the meantime, the GNWT has said its vision is to open more, smaller mines in areas like critical minerals. Plenty of this week’s geoscience forum is dedicated to the companies trying to make that happen.

The territory is also leaning into the conservation economy. Money from a massive $375-million deal to fund Indigenous-led conservation began flowing this summer.

The funds can be put toward Guardians programs, the management and establishment of protected and conserved areas, climate monitoring and on-the-land programming, among other activities. The money is expected to be made available over the next decade, if not longer.

That deal, signed a year ago, represented a milestone as it demonstrated a rarity – a sector other than resource extraction generating a nine-figure sum of money for the NWT’s communities.