CAPE TOWN (Reuters) — The world’s top diamond producer De Beers and the South African government will form a new black-controlled diamond mining company, they said on Friday.The new company, which might later be listed on the Johannesburg stock exchange, would combine the assets of state mining group Alexkor and the Namaqualand mine unit owned by the South African unit of De Beers.

“It is going to be a serious diamond player,” De Beers Chairman Nicky Oppenheimer told a news conference.

De Beers has been seeking to meet government demands to include more blacks in the mainstream economy, opportunities they were denied during decades of apartheid.

To help forge the new firm, De Beers would give a 20 percent stake in Namaqualand Mines — which last year produced one million carats — to South Africa’s mining ministry at no cost to the government. De Beers said it would not operate the new unnamed company and would dilute its stake over time. Both Alexkor and De Beers’ Namaqualand are involved in mining diamonds on South Africa’s northwest coast.

Minerals Minister Buyelwa Sonjica welcomed the deal, saying it was a good example of a public-private partnership.

The deal would help alleviate poverty and contribute to job creation in one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, the Northern Cape, she told the news conference. Oppenheimer said an independent valuation of the two firms’ assets would take place before the creation of the new company in 2008. It might later be listed on the Johannesburg stock exchange.

The ministry said there was no connection between the deal and resolution of a dispute with De Beers over alleged stockpiling of diamonds in the 1990s. A senior ministry official said on Friday that dispute had been resolved.

De Beers Namaqualand operation was established in 1928 and contributes around 7 percent to the total output of De Beers Consolidated Mines (DBCM), the group’s South African unit.

Alexkor, established in 1989, also mines alluvial diamonds on the northwest coast.

The group finalised a 3.7-billion-rand deal last year to bring black investors into its South African business unit.

Former miner turned businessman Manne Dipico, who heads the black investment company which bought a 26 percent stake in the subsidiary, played a prominent role in arranging the new deal.