By - RN Bhaskar
Category - Diamond buyers
Published By - Cash Gold Buyer
 |
| Diamond buyers |
De Beers, the world’s biggest diamond player, appears to be against
blood diamonds. For instance, it markets its ware under the Forevermark
brand, and claims to sell only ones ‘responsibly sourced’.
Yet, it
seems to have linkages with peddlers of blood diamonds: last year
protests erupted in the United Kingdom criticising Steinmetz, a De Beers
associate, for being one of the major promoters of blood diamonds.
The
issue has become so vexatious that almost a quarter of the $18 billion
global market for diamonds is estimated to be blood diamonds, most of
which get routed through Antwerp.
It was to avoid the stigma and
ensure that customers got the purest stuff that some companies started
growing rough diamonds in the lab – by replicating the conditions that
Mother Nature engenders.
These diamonds are intrinsically of
better quality than earth-mined diamonds. And unlike as with most other
earth-mined diamonds, which either scar the earth with mining, or adopt
unfair labour practices, lab-grown diamonds are therefore considered to
be ‘ethical’ diamonds.
That possibly could have been the trigger
to try and give lab-grown diamonds a bad name. It all began with De
Beers issuing a global notice that some 600 stones had been discovered
in Antwerp, which were allegedly given to a diamond testing laboratory
IGI (International Gemmological Institute) so that they could be
certified as being “earth-mined” or “natural” diamonds.
Some media
reports claimed that they were from Gemesis, the largest producer of
lab-grown diamonds in the world. Yet, curiously, after 10 months of
investigations, the diamonds seized by the Antwerp police have turned
out to be ‘natural’.
When DNA queried IGI, its co-CEO was not only hostile in his responses, but also refused to reply to any of the queries raised.
Then
came reports that 10 more diamonds were discovered by Gemmological
Institute of America (GIA) in Hong Kong that were “similar to Gemesis”.
But
in its replies to DNA, GIA was helpful enough to admit that identifying
the actual producer of lab-grown diamonds is not technically possible.
It therefore appears that someone has been trying to malign Gemesis.
The
role of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, the umbrella organisation for
diamond trade bodies worldwide, is equally curious. Its primary focus
is to ensure that consumer confidence in diamonds does not get adversely
affected. But it has not taken any stand against De Beers approved
diamond traders who peddle blood diamonds, or against laboratories which
are alleged to be willing to give any desired certificate for diamonds
against a price (lab-shopping).
It told DNA that it did not want
to comment on specific companies or laboratories. Antwerp Centre’s
wholly owned subsidiary, HRD, is a diamond testing laboratory and one of
the most profitable in the world, and it too has got involved in such a
controversy.
What is even more curious is that none of the
diamond testing laboratories has bothered to talk about the lab-grown
CVD diamond factory that De Beers itself owns – ElementSix, which
Financial Times (January 14, 2013 issue) reckons to be a mammoth in size
and capabilities.
There are two fights thus taking place –
between the earth-mined and lab-grown diamond folks, and second, the
blood diamond peddlers and protestors.
Guess who’s benefiting from all this? The laboratories that test the rocks – they’re laughing all the way to the bank.
And
the victim? There’s only one – the consumer, since he has to pay for
the testing expense too, to check if the diamond is for real, and if he
doesn’t, then live with the confusion of its worth.
Even De Beers
appears to be a beneficiary because it has realised higher prices for
roughs. In the index of diamond prices, the price of roughs has gone up
faster than those of cut and polished stones.
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