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...
12 october 2026
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
Belgium's September imports and exports show fragile recovery continuing
12 october 2009
Belgium's imports and exports of rough and polished diamonds in September, as the world looked back 12 months to the start of the financial crisis, showed continuing stability as a result of increasing demand for diamonds. The statistics appear to show that the fledgling recovery, while gradually gathering strength, remains fragile. With the vital Christmas sales season about to start in the United States, the market is anxiously waiting to see the strength of U.S. consumer jewellery purchases.
Gold En Route for New Records?
05 october 2009
Market analysts wonder if the psychological threshold of $1,007.70 per ounce of gold reached on September 8 at the London Exchange, which was the highest score after the record level in March 2008, will serve as a prologue to further growth in price for the yellow metal called the last shelter asset.
Resistive Property of Rough Diamonds: Non-Transparency
28 september 2009
In the end of the 1970th Martin Rapaport made a small revolution in diamond trade, having organized regular publication of reports on retail diamond prices in the market of New York. Since then the “Rapaport Price List” has been a necessary tool in the arsenal of diamond dealers, cutters, retailers, analysts, experts in marketing, and financiers – everyone who is connected with the diamond market. In later years the idea has been amplified and developed by a number of independent agencies and today well structured, authentic and promptly updated information about polished prices provided by Polished Prices, Idex Online, and ADL can serve as a reliable reference point in this complex business.
Great Depression and Drivers of Diamond Market
14 september 2009
Commenting the results of the summit held by the G20 ministers of finance, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that unemployment will continue to rise and reach its peak in 2010. Some analysts in the United States, Japan and EC released a similar forecast immediately before the summit. These evaluations appear sufficiently grounded and add some certainty to the short-term development prospect in the global rough and polished diamond market. Since there is a rigid correlation between rising unemployment and decreasing spending power of the population it will take about one year for global polished demand to continue its free fall. Dealers considering the possibility to buy rough diamonds at current prices offered by major diamond miners and staking on growth in their speculative capacity would be certainly eager to get a high probability indicator (at least qualitative) to determine the time when the population’s purchasing power will start going up – especially so in the United States which would actually mean a true end to the crisis in the diamond market.
Sino-DRC pact amended: Is the West clipping China’s wings from spreading in Africa?
07 september 2009
A debt relief programme for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which had been without a formal International Monetary Fund (IMF) assistance programme since 2006 was put on ice until the central African country amended some components of a USD9 billion infrastructure-for-minerals deal it had signed with China.
Diamond Paradox
26 august 2009
Both the rough market and polished market have actually acquired a strategic investor on the part of the Russian state. Of course this is an investor of necessity whose reasoning lies more in the political than in the market plane. But it is a very large-scale investor not limited to a narrow assortment of knowingly “investment attractive” stones. This Russian experiment will have an utterly intriguing result important for the whole industry. If we take into account that Gokhran “entered the market” at a moment when the investment object was undervalued by 40%-60% and that prices will return to their pre-crisis levels, say, in 2012 – this may be considered quite a fortunate investment whose earning power may well be compared with or turn out even higher than that of investments made into conventional commodities.
Is time running out on memo and long-term credit?
24 august 2009
Financial experts like to say that a crisis is actually an opportunity. The current global recession is no exception. So does it offer a prospect for the diamond sector to overhaul some of its more controversial business methods? And could those changes prepare it for a more solid footing for the future? These questions are asked by Antwerp Facets in an analysis of the memo system in polished sales.
Maintaining the Market – Everyone Minds One’s Own Gear
18 august 2009
ALROSA’s 2Q 2009 report and its 2008 consolidated financial statement prove that the main problem faced by the Russian company is its debenture debt exceeding 150 billion roubles. Structurally, current liabilities account for over 40% of that amount and the company is expected to pay more than 130 billion roubles to its creditors in 2009-2010. It is quite evident that in any case, even if the situation on the world diamond market will be most favorable, ALROSA will not be able to sustain credit payments in 2009 and 2010 unaided.
ALROSA: Heavy Debts and Ambitious Plans
14 august 2009
Diamond mining company ALROSA posted FY 2008 loss due to the crisis and foreign-exchange fluctuations, and almost doubled its debt burden during the year having obtained loans for construction of underground mines.
Will China, India displace US as the top buyer of world diamonds?
10 august 2009
The discourse on whether China and India had the potential to become leading diamond buying countries was a subject of much debate at the recently ended 5th edition of the Botswana Resource Sector Conference.
