Exclusive
Diamond market crash is Africa’s opportunity, not its crisis – M'zée Fula Ngenge
Global natural diamond supply is forecast to fall below 95 million carats this year, the lowest since 1987. For Dr. M'zée Fula Ngenge, chairperson of the African Diamond Council (ADC), this is not a death knell but a clarion call. In an exclusive...
Yesterday
Tracr passes 5 million rough diamonds milestone as De Beers expands provenance push
De Beers Group's blockchain-enabled traceability platform Tracr reached a significant milestone in 2025, with more than 5 million rough diamonds individually scanned and registered, up from 2.8 million cumulative registrations reported in 2024. The...
28 september 2026
South African diamonds head to Hong Kong: SDT partners with BRINKS for JGW 2026
South Africa’s State Diamond Trader (SDT) has confirmed the country's participation in Jewellery & Gem World Hong Kong (JGW) 2026 through a partnership with BRINKS. SDT marketing and communication manager Tsholofelo Gopolang Tselapedi...
14 september 2026
David Benderly: PermaScribe seeks to put trust mark on diamond table, not just girdle
In this interview with Rough & Polished’s Mathew Nyaungwa, PhotoScribe Technologies president and chief executive David Benderly explains how PermaScribe differs technically from conventional laser inscription, its potential to strengthen security, and...
31 august 2026
The great reset: Paul Zimnisky on supply catharsis, De Beers' bargain and the case for natural diamonds
The natural diamond industry is in the throes of its most profound reset in a generation. Supply is plunging to its lowest level since 1987 and De Beers—once valued at over $9 billion—is reportedly being sold for as little as $1 billion.
Lab-grown...
10 august 2026
Lobbying in the Russian market of precious metals and precious stones – How does it look like?
02 september 2019
Having appreciated the role of the active position of the sectoral public opinion, especially against the background of the system of assessing the quality of adopted laws being introduced in Russia at that time (the ARI system - assessing the regulatory impact of regulatory legal acts), the regulator “helped” create sectoral public organizations more friendly to authorities. It was achieved by strengthening them with staff of their own employees. Thus, in contrast to the former activists, “sectoral public voices” appeared quite loyal to the initiatives of the authorities.
The Kosygin Line and Titan of Diamond Renaissance
26 august 2019
At the end of 2018, the Russky Mir Publishing House published a two-volume edition, titled “The Diamond Industrial Complex of Russia.” The book has a considerable circulation of 2,500 copies for our times, a bulky volume of 1,480 pages, and Vyacheslav Anatolyevich Shtyrov is indicated on the cover as its author. According to the book’s annotation: "The edition is intended for specialists in the mining industry and other segments of the real sector of the economy, managers, economists, historians, teachers and students of all levels of education." The personal website of V. A. Shtyrov announced the publication of this book simply and modestly: “There has been published a history of the ALROSA Company.” Since Shtyrov, who headed ALROSA in 1996-2002, is a major functionary in the Russian diamond industry of the post-Soviet period, such a voluminous work that went beyond his pen will certainly become a significant milestone in diamond historiography and will eliminate many of the contradictions and inaccuracies so characteristic of it. Surely this is how a historian should reason opening this well-published book - designed in a strict academic style - with understandable trepidation. And what will he or she read there?
Lobbying in the Russian market of precious metals and precious stones – How does it look like?
19 august 2019
Is it possible for the Russian market of precious metals and precious stones (PMPS) to compete for its economic interests? Yes, it is possible but taking into account a number of both objective and subjective (for the industry) factors. The more than twenty years of experience in public work in the field of PMPS allow the author of this article to break the history of public struggle for the liberalization of the PMPS market in five stages, each of which has its own characteristics and its historical significance for the industry.
A new normal in the diamond trade
12 august 2019
ABN Amro Bank recently sent a letter to several of its diamond clients stating that it would be limiting finance for rough purchases "in view of the continued lack of profitability in the purchase of rough goods. We recommend you to show constraint and only consider purchasing rough when there is sufficient profitability. We want our clients to … refrain from purchases just with the aim to hold on to existing allocations with the mining companies or just to remain fixed to sources only hoping for better times to come.” In other words, continuing to lend to businesses that cannot turn a profit is not what ABN Amro will do. What can one say about this?
Is the Diamond Industry Really in a Crisis?
05 august 2019
Diamond industry conditions have recently been described as a “crisis.” In some segments of the industry anecdotes of “no business” have surfaced as well as “no demand” for certain categories of diamonds. A representative for a leading trade group of manufacturers in India has recently said the current “recession” is “worse than the one witnessed in 2008-2009” during the global financial crisis.
The KP Elephant In The Room Has To Be Dealt With
29 july 2019
The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) Intersessional Meeting in Mumbai completed its half yearly meeting three weeks ago. It gave us some time to reflect on why the KPCS agenda is moving so slowly.
Diamond manufacturing segment in the diamond industry of the Russian Federation
22 july 2019
Taking into account that AK ALROSA PJSC incorporated in Yakutia has a diamond cutting unit, the results of its diamond cutting factories in other parts of Russia should be considered together with the results of the diamond cutting industry of Yakutia in spite of their location. ALROSA rejected the vertical integration concept in 2013 and uses the Group’s diamond cutting factories to monitor rough diamond prices. That said, the polished diamond sales by value are comparable with - or even exceed - the sales of all the major companies of the Russian diamond cutting industry.
ALROSA and Mugabe's legacy
15 july 2019
Earlier this year, ALROSA announced a new testing ground for its activity in Africa. This testing ground, unexpectedly for market analysts and African experts, was Zimbabwe, the country that survived the fall of Robert Mugabe’s seemingly unshakable regime in November 2017 and now interested in an inflow of foreign investment to revitalize its economy. In the beginning of the 2010s, this country was claiming to be one of the world’s top three diamond producers, but currently, for natural and man-made reasons, it occupies modest positions. Nevertheless, according to the management of ALROSA, Zimbabwe, along with Angola, is one of the two African countries with a very high geological potential.
The large diamond recovery technologies used at the national facilities and abroad and their development prospects
08 july 2019
The technologies to recover large rough diamonds from the ore deposits both in Russia and abroad include the disintegration, classification and direct beneficiation according to size categories. The difference lies in the equipment and technological processes used at each of these stages. The fundamental difference of the national technology is in the disintegration of the diamond-bearing raw material in primary crushers, up to 400 mm, and then autogenous grinding mills are used, while at the factories abroad, three-stage crushing is used. However, this is exactly what leads to different rates of recovering undamaged large stones.
Jewelry industry and the state: not a priority area
01 july 2019
It should be noted that the entire sphere of precious metals and precious stones (PMPS) was unlucky from the very arrival of capitalism to the space of the former USSR. 1993 gave the start to the “diamond scam” as it was later called, the main figure of which was Andrei Kozlenok, the founder of Golden ADA, Inc. It doesn’t matter if it was a really planned scam, or it was a common management mistake due to inexperience, but unlike all other sectors of the economy, the PMPS sphere did not receive that degree of freedom, which all other areas had from the very beginning, when the country’s economic legislation was liberalized during the ongoing privatization.
