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
Investor Sentiment in Diamond Mining Stocks Makes for a Contrarian Play
22 april 2019
On ALROSA’s (MICEX: ALRS) Capital Markets Day on March 18th, the company said the most frequently asked questions it gets during 1-on-1 meetings with investors are those related to the impact that “synthetic” diamonds will have on the business. Three days later, on a Mountain Province Diamonds (TSX: MPVD) analyst call following the company’s full year 2018 results, a portfolio manager posed more of a statement than a question in the Q&A portion of the call starkly reflecting a wider sentiment of institutional investors’ view of the diamond mining industry at the moment. The PM bluntly addressed their opinion on the threat they believe lab-created diamonds pose to natural.
Is this Botswana Diamonds’ eureka moment?
15 april 2019
The now defunct African Diamonds (AFD) discovered the AK6 mine, in Botswana, which was acquired by Lucara Diamond in 2010 and renamed Karowe Mine. Karowe, which was fully commissioned in the second quarter of 2012, is one of the world’s foremost producers of large, high quality, Type IIA diamonds in excess of 10.8 carats, including the historic 1,109 carat Lesedi La Rona and the 813 carat Constellation. Lucara and AFD were joint venture partners in the AK6 diamond development project, after the former bought De Beers' stake in the project early 2010. AFD owned 40% of AK6, as well as a portfolio of exploration projects in Botswana. The chairperson of AFD was non-other than John Teeling, who now leads Botswana Diamonds, which has exploration projects in Botswana and South Africa.
From Russia with Grib
06 april 2019
Recently, I have been so fascinated by the vivid initiatives of Russia’s dominant diamond miner, ALROSA that I completely lost sight of a very remarkable company - the second and at the same time the only privately-owned Russian diamond miner, which has nothing to do with ALROSA. This miner is Arkhangelskgeoldobycha, now called AGD Diamonds.
Adventures of diamond dilettantes
01 april 2019
The powerful intensification of diamond mining operations in Yakutia, which started 1959, could not but alarm De Beers. The market was clearly not ready to digest such an amount of diamonds, and there was no doubt that these diamonds would be exported — the USSR’s own needs for industrial diamonds did not exceed one tenth of the declared production target. The problem required a quick solution. In the fall of 1959, Philip Oppenheimer, head of De Beers’ Central Selling Organization arrived in the USSR, and the first official contract for the supply of rough diamonds between the USSR and De Beers was signed.
On innovations in Russia’s Administrative Violations Code: Squelch them at once to save their suffering...
27 march 2019
As I see it, the "humanism" of the innovations introduced in Article 19.14. of Russia’s Administrative Violations Code (AVC) is in that business entities working with precious metals and precious stones were allowed not to suffer, being instead threatened to be squelched with just a few fines. For good.
Unauthorized article about a knowingly bad bill
25 march 2019
The Legislative Activity Commission of the Russian Federation Government held a meeting on January 21, 2019 to review two federal bills, one of which was “On Amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation in Terms of Establishing Responsibility for the Unauthorized Mining and Trafficking of Amber, Jade or Other Semi-Precious Stones”; and the other “On Amendments to the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses in Terms of Improving Administrative Responsibility in the Sphere of Production, Use and Circulation of Precious Metals and Precious Stones”. The bills in their key parts amend Articles 191 and 255 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (with the corresponding amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation) and respectively Article 19.14 of the Administrative Offenses Code. At their core, the amendments are revolutionary for Russia’s jewelry industry (and extremely negative for its development), since in fact they equate the turnover of the so-called semi-precious stones (the term "semi-precious" is not recommended for use by CIBJO and a number of other global industry organizations) to the turnover of precious stones. Moreover, the punishments for committing crimes and offenses related to the turnover of semi-precious stones are comparable to the corresponding crimes and offenses relating to precious stones.
ALROSA 2019 - Airports and Sales
18 march 2019
At the end of last year, I was immersed in an exceptionally curious activity — the study of the updated strategy of the ALROSA Group. Let me remind you that the key issue I raised was the lack of recovery prospects for the Mir mine, along with a very strange desire to accomplish a hard-to-do engineering task - to build a new underground mine on the Jubilee diamond pipe. In turn, the Group’s CEO said that it was all nonsense and when the project of restoring Mir would come to existence, it would be included in ALROSA’s new strategy. Sounds good, and any approach has the right to exist. We can judge about the intentions of the company’s management only by their public statements. Nevertheless, being obviously informed better than anyone else about the long-term projections of ALROSA, its CEO got rid of a significant part of his stake in the company - and did the right thing. At that time, I found amusing the term coined in the bowels of ALROSA about the planned loss-making economics inherent to a number of the company’s projects. We then made a cautious assumption that an increase in the number of such projects could turn ALROSA itself into a planned loss-making venture. As it turned out, the reality surpassed even the wildest assumptions.
Imports from Hong Kong S.A.R. to Mainland China: Diamonds and Gems Dwarfed by Gold
11 march 2019
Guangzhou Diamond Exchange recently analysed the newly released official trade data, it shows that commodities under the HS Codes of Chapter 71 contribute more than 31% of the total imports from Hong Kong S.A.R. to Mainland China in 2018, achieving over US$2.6 billion in value. This is according to the monthly statistical data published by the General Administration of Customs, P.R. China.
A new round of ALROSA privatization
04 march 2019
The shares of the AK ALROSA (PAO) remain the last major asset in property of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) that is why it is necessary to retain the state control over the company. The practical experience of the recent years has shown that it is the government support that is able to back up the diamond industry and avoid a sharp decline in the periods of economic instability and crisis in the global economy as the main component of a diamond price and diamond processing is formed on the luxury market.
New technologies in diamond-bearing ore beneficiation
25 february 2019
The development of new technologies in diamond-bearing ore beneficiation is required to increase the stone recovery level and prevent their damage in crushing as well as to reduce the capital and operational expenses of diamond miners.
