Boart Longyear John Hoffmeister as president and chairman of the board of the company. FACTS was dissolved when Boart International (a wholly owned subsidiary of Anglo American) bought out CDP's interest in Longyear. In 1974, Boart International invested capital which helped Longyear to become the world's leading manufacturer of diamond bits. Boart Longyear engineers in North Bay, Ontario, secured a reliable source of high-performance synthetic diamonds, which triggered the development of a new bit design – the impregnated-diamond bit. With decades of powder metallurgy experience behind them, Longyear engineers set out to develop a new crown that consisted of synthetic diamonds evenly
Boart Longyear adopted the new logo and corporate colors. Most of Boart Longyear's employees and revenues in the mid-1990s came from international operations. Operations in the United States employed about 1,000 people and accounted for about $130 million in sales, a relatively small part of the firm's 8,000 employees and over $600 million in annual revenues worldwide. With diverse products and services and decades of international experience, the Boart Longyear Company seemed well prepared to enter the new century. Despite ownership by Anglo American for more than 30 years, Boart Longyear was considered a non-core asset for the Johannesburg based mining company.