De Beers to sell lab-made diamonds

AN ANNOUNCEMENT by De Beers that it will sell diamond jewellery that has been made in a lab for the first time, is not likely to have a huge effect on local diamond production and demand.

De Beers this week announced that after 130 years of being in the business of diamonds, it would now begin selling man-made diamonds that cost about a tenth of the price of a mined gem.

The shift towards selling manmade diamonds is a historic one, as the company has vowed for years to never sell diamonds that were made in labs.

The man-made diamonds will be sold in the United States under the name Lightbox, a fashion jewellery brand.

These new diamonds will be sold at a fraction of the price of mined diamonds.

The strategy will create a large price gap between mined diamonds and the diamonds that are manmade. It will also put pressure on rivals that specialise in synthesised stones.

The selling price of a one carat man-made diamond is $4 000. While the selling price of a mined diamond that is similar to a one carat man-made diamond would cost about $8 000. The new lab diamonds from De Beers will sell for about $800 a carat.

Bruce Cleaver, the CEO of De Beers, said that the Lightbox will change the lab-grown diamond sector.

According to Cleaver, their research suggests that consumers see diamonds that are grown in a lab as a fun, pretty product that should be inexpensive.

There is also growing concern in the diamond industry that diamonds that are expensive do not interest millennial customers who instead will spend their money on expensive electronics or vacations.

Diamonds have also been under attack for their environmental and human-rights concerns that are linked to mining communities in poor African countries.

Man-made diamonds are different from imitation gems like cubic zirconia because they have the same physical characteristics and chemical makeup of mined diamonds.

The man-made diamonds are made from a carbon-seed that is placed inside of a microwave chamber and then superheated into a glowing plasma ball.

The above process makes particles that can ultimately crystallise into diamonds in 10 weeks. The technology used to make the man-made diamond is so advanced that experts need a machine to differentiate between a lab diamond and a mined diamond.

Following the announcement, Kimberley Ekapa Mining Joint Venture (KEM-JV) said yesterday that while the the production of synthetic diamonds might have a “slight” impact on demand for mined diamonds, there would always be a place for “the real thing”.

KEM-JV spokesperson, Gert Klopper, said that the phrase “real is rare” would always be associated with diamonds.

“Diamonds are billion-year-old treasures of the earth that came to us very, very slowly, which makes them uniquely meaningful in today’s on-demand world. At a time when everything ‘artificial’ aims to compete with, and replace, ‘natural’ and ‘real’, consumers care about the inherent value, authenticity and symbolism that a diamond carries. Each natural diamond possesses a fingerprint that is tens of millions of years in the making. The emotion and heritage carried by natural diamonds cannot be replicated in a factory,” said Klopper.

“Laboratory-grown diamonds are produced in two to three weeks in a factory environment. The differences between natural diamonds and laboratory-grown diamonds go well beyond their origin. Their inclusions and growth structures carry the marks of their very different birth process, which is how they are easily recognisable using specialist equipment.

“Laboratory-grown diamonds and real diamonds also carry very different emotional and monetary value. Natural diamonds are inherently rare and valuable, whereas laboratory grown diamonds are produced rapidly and at scale, limiting their value and negating resale value.”

Klopper further intensified calls for transparency in the industry with regard to the disclosure and marketing of synthetic diamonds.

“The consumer should be made clearly aware when they are buying a diamond if that diamond is synthetic or real and should guard against passing off ‘fake’ diamonds as real,” Klopper concluded.

Lightbox will be the only jewellery brand to source lab-grown diamonds from De Beers Group’s Element Six business and any Lightbox lab-grown diamonds of 0.2 carats or above will carry a permanent Lightbox logo inside the stone.

“Invisible to the naked eye but easily identified under magnification, the logo will clearly identify the stone as lab-grown and also serve as a mark of quality and assurance that it was produced by Element Six,” De Beers stated.