Our Operations > Puerto Arturo Mine
The cycle of our business model begins at our Puerto Arturo mine, located between the villages of Sábripa, in the Municipality of Muzo, and the villages of Mata de Fique and Note in the Municipality of Quípama in the West of the department of Boyacá. There, our company Esmeraldas Mining Services, EMS, is in charge of executing underground exploration and exploitation operations. Puerto Arturo has an area of more than 55 hectares and has been, since pre-colonial times, the cradle of the most valuable and coveted emeralds in the world. Its reputation is due to the color of the gems it produces, being stones of a unique bluish-green tone and characteristic of this deposit. For this reason, the international jewelry industry has named the tone of these stones in honor to the municipality from which they are born, making now the Muzo Green tone the most desired color in emeralds.
The mine operates on five main underground galleries. Four of these are vertical shafts: Tequendama, Catedral, Volveré (which reach a depth of more than 90 meters) and Puerto Arturo, the best known and deepest, descends to more than 150 meters. The fifth tunnel corresponds to the spiral ramp of more than 900 meters that interconnects the galleries, facilitating the access of heavy machinery to speed up drilling and, in turn, enabling safer access and exit routes for our personnel.
To enter the mine, about a thousand employees who work there descend hundreds of meters below the surface before going through a maze of galleries and tunnels. EMS miners use jackhammers and hand tools to chisel away the black shale walls in search of the famous white vein of calcite, the clue that an emerald is nearby. They carefully separate the gemstone from the calcite rock. The extraction process is monitored by CCTV surveillance and security personnel to safeguard the quality and traceability of the crystal.
