Mountain Province Diamonds says it has reached a deal with De Beers to settle some debts by handing over its minority stake in the NWT’s Gahcho Kué mine.
In a Thursday news release, Mountain Province said it had entered a restructuring agreement with De Beers and its lenders under which De Beers takes its stake in the NWT mine in exchange for wiping out what Mountain Province owes – including its share of the mine’s eventual cleanup cost.
Up until now, De Beers owned just over half the mine and was its operator. Mountain Province owned the rest.
Mountain Province keeps an option to buy its stake back before 2030 and gets first refusal if De Beers ever sells the mine. Its lenders agreed to suspend interest and loan repayments for six months while the company tries to find new funding.
Chief executive Jonathan Comerford said the deal followed “a material decline in diamond prices over the past year, driven in the main by tariff-related uncertainty and the conflict in the Middle East.”
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The agreement announced on Thursday provides “greater certainty for the employees and communities connected to Gahcho Kué,” Comerford was quoted as saying.
The announcement caps a year of mounting trouble at the mine, which employed about 850 people in late 2025. Mountain Province lost $280 million in 2025 and its previous chief executive, Mark Wall, resigned last November.
In February, the mine paused an expansion that was meant to keep it running until 2030, with De Beers at the time demanding payment of just under $40 million from its partner.
De Beers has since said it expects the mine to close in 2028, and in February it began talks with about five percent of staff about redundancies.
Gahcho Kué is now the NWT’s only operating diamond mine. Diavik closed in March and Ekati entered receivership in July after no buyer came forward.
