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
Democratic Republic of Congo: War for Contracts
19 november 2008
In March and April 2008, the Web site of the special government commission under the auspices of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the DRC (www.miningcongo.cd) posted a two-volume report containing a detailed analysis of contracts concluded by the DRC state corporations with foreign mining companies in the period from 1998 to 2003. The commission’s conclusions said that 61 contracts must be overhauled – this is almost a complete list of mineral mining projects in the DRC.
The Fairest Price Possible
12 november 2008
The financial crisis embittered the discussion about pricing principles on the world diamond market. The position taken by De Beers and ALROSA, the biggest producers of rough diamonds, which announced a significantly scaled down supply to stabilize prices, got under the lash of well-known expert Chaim Even-Zohar. Essentially, Even-Zohar’s criticism boils down to defending the classic liberal thesis saying that the only fair pricing mechanism is the balance between demand and supply on a free market and any deviations from this concept are negative since they aggravate the risk of monopolization.
McCain, Obama and Diamond Market
13 october 2008
It appears that for the diamond market there is indeed a perceptible difference between Obama and McCain. Under the Democrats, with a strong dollar and cheap oil there should be a dramatic increase in the number of jobs for the middle class and accordingly the purchasing power exactly of this part of the U.S. population should be substantially improved. In any case, this is how it was under Clinton.
Anomalies of World Diamond Market
08 october 2008
This summer, the Kimberley Process management posted their world statistics for 2004-2007. The furnished data allow making an in-depth comparative analysis of the world diamond market and educing some anomalies, whose comprehension brings up non-trivial implications.
Adventure of Belarusian “Princess”
27 august 2008
This polished diamond was manufactured in Belarus by Adamas BSU, a government-owned company, from a synthetic diamond produced by the BARS installation. It complies with the Belarus National Standard TU RB 400078252.010-2004. This polished diamond was offered for examination to several gemological laboratories in Moscow. Their experts were not informed of the diamond’s original data.
Major Trend on Diamond Market
03 july 2008
The abrupt jump in prices for large-size and high-quality rough diamonds has triggered heated polemics in the professional medium. Key mining companies’ representatives point to the following unbiased reasons: the necessity to switch over to underground mining substantially contributing to cost increase and the shrinking share of high-quality rough in the current mining pattern due to depletion of major primary deposits.
Rough Prices Toe the Line for Another Race
16 june 2008
Almost all professional diamond marketers have no doubts that rough prices will continue to rise in the near future. However, no one is ready to give an accurate forecast as to the extent the rough quality will push the prices up. Analysts and spokesmen of large companies confine themselves to general enunciations similar to the one recently expressed by the Rio Tinto representatives that “between 2008 and 2016 the demand for diamonds will significantly exceed their supply.” Meanwhile, the polished diamonds market displayed a peculiar trend: large high-quality diamonds sharply rose in prices (from 10% to 15% for the excellent grade stones of 1 to 3 carats and above), whereas prices for small diamonds were virtually left unchanged. It looks like this time diamond dealers have taken the lead and one cannot but agree there is some logic in this strategy.
Diamond Corner
25 may 2008
In 1890 (just two years after De Beers was founded), Britain saw coming off the press The Firm of Girdlestone, the romance written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. One of the plotlines in this book had a straight relation to the diamond market, and the parent of Sherlock Holmes made there two amazing prophesies: he actually predicted a possibility of discovering huge diamond fields in Russia and formulated a theory proving that the diamond market was not in fact a commodity market, but an information market.
Verkhotina Owners Agreed on Peace
17 april 2008
On April 15, 2008 in Moscow, President of OAO Lukoil Vagit Alekperov, Chairman of De Beers Societe Anonym (De Beers) Nicky Oppenheimer, Managing Director of De Beers Gareth Penny, Chairman of Archangel Diamond Corporation (ADC) Bruce Cleaver and Director of ADC Tom Beardmore-Grey signed agreements on ownership rights and development terms for the Verkhotina Area located to the North-West of Arkhangelsk.
De Beers: Results for the year ended 31 december 2007
18 february 2008
Underlying earnings increased 14 percent to US$483 million (2006 US$425 million) while EBITDA remained steady as effective cost management at the Group’s African mining operations offset the impact of slightly lower sales which were constrained by supply to the Diamond Trading Company (DTC).
