Russia’s Alrosa has indicated that it has yet to see the impact of the price decline for rough in the Antwerp market and other major diamond centres, and expects the impact on Alrosa's sales revenues to be brief, according to John Helmer writing at www.polishedprices.com.
An Alrosa release, dated August 31, said that following the August tender, Alrosa's United Selling Organization "has registered a strong demand potential almost for all categories of rough diamonds and stabilization of prices, with an insignificant correction in some categories, which is connected with a significantly lower impact of speculative factors on the market."
The tender conducted in Moscow, Tel Aviv and Hong Kong, saw the sale of about 90% of the stones on offer for a total of $22.5 million, it said.
"The purchase prices exceeded the upset prices (ALROSA’s current selling prices for rough diamonds) by more than 5%," said Alrosa.
The company’s spokesman Andrei Polyakov told PolishedPrices that there is no decline in Alrosa's prices, but he cautioned: "we expect a general price correction on the world market, primarily due to the decrease of speculative operations on the market."
"The prices on several types of rough can be corrected - for example, smalls and Indian goods - but for Alrosa we expect some price growth due to the overall reduction of supply on the world market, and because the quiet summer period is over.”
“So we hope that the possible price decrease will be short and we are looking forward to September," Polyakov said.
According to Polyakov, Alrosa managed to achieve a premium in last month's tender of larger sized goods "which is a good result. It wasn’t 100% due to the summer season."
He added: “It is difficult to forecast the price trend for the third and fourth quarters, until the results of the Hong Kong Jewellery Fair are in.”
The Hong Kong trade fair runs from September 19 to September 23.
Ruis Diamonds, owned by Lev Leviev and the second largest Russian diamond manufacturer, confirmed that Alrosa's prices remain robust, and there is no sign of a correction yet.
Alrosa has "modified their price list, but the price for the end users, both inside and outside of Russia, didn’t go down."
Ruis said it did not expect the BHP tender outcome to impact on Alrosa's pricing. "BHP has suffered a 20% price drop. This happened due to a series of factors like the summer season, plus some bank problems at Indian diamond companies, and the general stock market decline. But BHP does not represent the trend of the whole market. We hope the prices will go up in September.”
Ararat Evoyan, head of the Russian diamond manufacturers association, said there is no sign that Alrosa will cut its prices dramatically. But for the price trend in the remainder of the year, Evoyan told PolishedPrices: “It’s unwise to guess - the market situation isn’t too optimistic."
