Synthetic diamonds poised to expand their market share

Speaking at the Investing in African Mining Indaba on Monday, Botswana's Minister of Minerals and Energy Lefoko Moagi said the ban on Russia diamonds might push prices up to the benefit of rival producers, but he also said the gap would be hard to fill, Reuters reported.
"We see the 30% gap that will be left by the ban being plugged by something else that is not natural. And for us that will be a challenge," he said.
Jacob Thamage, head of Botswana's Diamond Hub, said uncertainty over the Ukraine conflict makes it difficult for Botswana and other natural diamond miners to fill the supply gap as ramping up operations requires significant investment.
"You don't want to invest a lot of money to up-scale and then the war ends the next day," Thamage said. "We also see the higher prices pushing consumers to substitutes such as the synthetics and this can cause problems for us if we cede the market to unnatural stones."
Thamage also fears that consumers might start to shun natural diamonds due to traceability issues. "There is an increased fear that buyers of diamonds will begin to treat all natural diamonds as conflict diamonds and therefore shift to unnatural diamonds," he said.