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

Russian engineers create a robot to monitor inner surfaces of pipes in the Arctic

01 november 2023

The Scientific and Educational Center "Russian Arctic" in Arkhangelsk has developed a robot for measuring the internal diameters of pipes and monitoring the condition of their surfaces, TASS quoted Marat Yeseev, a scientific director of the center and a Deputy First Vice-rector for Promising Projects of the Northern Arctic Federal University, as saying.

The robot is equipped with wheels on telescopic "legs" that adjust to the diameter of the pipe. The device is equipped with video cameras and laser rangefinders. Information is transmitted via Wi-Fi to the information processing center, where it creates a 3D model of the internal space in which the robot is located.

The device will be in demand, for example, in shipbuilding and ship repair, where there are many cylindrical parts of equipment. The prototype is made for pipes up to 30 cm in diameter, but robots can be made for other sizes of structures.

"The task was to make a device that will be used by many enterprises, that is, a whole series of such measuring robots," Evseev said.

Alex Shishlo for Rough&Polished