(paulzimnisky.com) - In 2016 the diamond industry has been marked by the follow-through of actions taken by De Beers, ALROSA (RTS: ALRS) and Rio Tinto (LSE: RIO) to curtail global supply, combined with a healthy 2015 retail holiday season that left the very cautious manufacturing segment of the industry under-stocked in early 2016. Leading up to 2015, gross over-speculation of global diamond demand growth by some diamond cutters resulted in a significant overhang of low-to-medium-quality polished stock in the industry pipeline, which reached an apex about this time last year. The supply glut was debilitating, and even fatal, for the manufactures (the cutters) as there was in some cases no market for their freshly polished product which they needed to unload in order to pay back loans used to buy the rough. The bellwether producers (the miners) took action towards to end of last year in an attempt to normalize the supply/demand balance, in an effort to provide a lifeline to their clients. The producers took a two-pronged approach, reducing rough supply to the market, either through production cuts and/or inventory build, and reducing prices, with a goal of restoring the rough/polished price spread, essentially returning profitability to the manufactures.
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