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
JCK Las Vegas 2019 through the eyes of an exhibitor
24 june 2019
The JCK Las Vegas Show is the largest and most representative jewelry exhibition in North America. More precisely, it embraces several exhibitions going on at more than 20 pavilions, which bring together about three thousand different companies from various countries engaged in the jewelry business for a whole week in Las Vegas - the so-called Las Vegas Jewelry Week.
In anticipation of ALROSA shareholders meeting: Results of 2018 and prospects for 2019
17 june 2019
At the end of June 2019, a General Meeting of Shareholders will be held, where the results of 2018 will be summed up and the ALROSA’s shares dividends for 2018 will be decided on. Taking into account the interim dividends paid for the first half of the last year in amount of ₽43.7 bn, or ₽5.93 per share, the money will be allocated for dividend payments based on the H2 2018 results. The Supervisory Board of ALROSA recommended the General Meeting of Shareholders to allocate 100% of the free cash flow for the dividend payments, which makes ₽30.3 bn, or ₽4.11 per share.
Have Russians fallen out of love for jewelry?
10 june 2019
In recent years, while reading the press, one can often come across opinions that the popularity of jewelry in Russia is plummeting, and the interest towards jewelry among the population is waning. Naturally, this issue is arousing concern on the part of jewelry trade and jewelry manufacturers. In contrast to commodity markets trading in many other goods, the jewelry market in Russia, thanks to the statistics of the assay supervision service, is sufficiently clear and predictable. However, the data coming from the Russian State Assay Chamber (RSAC) are only a statement of facts that require analysis.
What We Call Man-made Diamonds Could Ultimately Determine Their Success
03 june 2019
When Signet jewelers’ (NYSE: SIG) e-commerce subsidiary James Allen began offering man-made diamonds in May, the company added an additional search tab to the site: “Earth-created diamonds” or “Lab-created Diamonds.” Up until this point, websites offering both products typically defaulted to natural diamonds or simply “diamonds” providing a further filter required to search for the man-made variety.
The place and role of synthetics in gem markets
27 may 2019
A dramatic breakthrough in the development of diamond synthesis technologies, which occurred during the last five years and is also accompanied by a significant decrease in production costs, has caused a lively debate in the industry on what kind of niche in the market can be occupied by synthetic diamonds. To date, there are two main positions. The first is that the synthetic market and the market for natural diamonds are different markets, they should not intersect, synthetics will never replace natural diamonds, and in the best case will be in the rank of expensive imitation jewelry. Proponents of the second position argue that synthetics are a direct competitor to natural diamonds able to oust natural analogues in the foreseeable future, at least in the category commonly called "Indian goods". For obvious reasons, diamond mining companies adhere to the first point of view, while the second is supported by producers of synthetic diamonds. The arguments of each of the parties are numerous and, in many ways, speculative, but for the time being we will leave aside their appeals to environmental and ethical issues, as well as their incantations that true love cannot be “synthetic”, and look at the task in historical retrospect.
The Last International
20 may 2019
The best diamond deposit in the world - the International Diamond Pipe (Internatsionalnaya in Russian) containing more than 7 carats of diamonds per tonne, was discovered by Soviet geologists in 1969. It was put into operation in record time and developed by the open-pit method in 1981. 75% of diamonds in this deposit are of gem quality, exceeding 2 mm in size and priced very high. The country needed high-quality diamonds, and this small diamond pipe was exhausted fairly quickly. Subsequently, the management of the Yakutalmaz Trust decided to build an underground mine, one of the first in the world.
The prospects of the development of the global top diamond mining companies
13 may 2019
The 2009 economic crisis has dramatically changed the pre-crisis balance between diamond mining, cutting&polishing and diamond goods trading companies and the competition between them under these circumstances has sharply increased. As a matter of fact, the third millennium, in which we have lived through quite a measurable part, is bringing about truly unprecedented changes. While until recently, there were four major companies, that played a key role in the diamond industry, nowadays, the situation is changing fast and second-tier companies are beginning to come to the forefront. Therefore, to assess the prospects for the development of the global diamond mining segment at present, it is essential to better define the place and role of companies in the future ranking within the diamond hierarchy on the basis of strategic analysis.
The global diamond mining industry in 2018
06 may 2019
In July this year, the Kimberley Process will release the statistics on the rough diamonds mined and sold by the countries in 2018. Last year, the same 23 countries were in the commercial diamond mining as in the previous years. Without this data at hand, we can estimate rather accurately the actual diamond production as well as the financial results of the global rough diamond trade based on the sum of the major diamond miners’ performance data in 2018.
Magic of Lab-Grown Diamonds, To Be Discovered
30 april 2019
Guangzhou Diamond Exchange (GZDE) held a forum entitled “Discover the Magics of Lab-Grown Diamonds” on April 20 during the 2019 China International Gold, Jewellery & Gem Fair – Shenzhen (Shenzhen Jewellery Fair). If the year of 2019 is expected to be the first year seeing large-scale commercial applications of lab-grown diamonds (LGDs), this forum is undoubtedly a key event during that trend. China's leading LGD producers, wholesalers, retailers as well as experts of jewellery design, industrial design, fashion industry and brand consulting gathered at the Shenzhen Jewellery Fair, brain storming the commercial application of LGDs.
Diamond slavery
29 april 2019
The diamond business has many dark pages in its history, but the use of the convict labour in the diamond mining industry for many years gives the most painful impression. This practice was applied in the South Africa and the Soviet Union only. Undoubtedly, De Beers surpassed in this – this company had started to employ prisoners in diamond mining since 1885. It appears that in the USSR such practice was of real interest almost immediately after the discovery of the first alluvial deposits in the Ural area. In 1940, the secretary of the Economic Council under the Council of People's Commissars Mikhail Pomaznev supervising the diamond geology at that time applied to the Head of the GULAG Vasiliy Chernyshev requesting to provide several hundreds prisoners to staff the diamond mining parties and got a positive answer.3 From that year on, the time of the most shameful affair in the Soviet diamond industry history began.
