Labour donor’s lab-grown diamond company hit by adverts ban
A LAB-GROWN diamond company founded by one of Labour’s biggest donors has been banned from showing adverts that fail to say its gems are artificial.
Skydiamond, set up by Dale Vince, the founder of green energy firm Ecotricity, has been accused of misleading consumers. Mr Vince’s company, which sells engagement rings starting at £3,000, claims to have created the world’s first carbon-negative diamonds “mined entirely from the sky”.
However, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) argued that around a quarter of UK buyers have never heard of synthetic diamonds, and so could easily have been misled. It said:
“Because the ads did not make clear that Skydiamond diamonds were synthetic we concluded that the claims ‘diamonds’, ‘diamonds made entirely from the sky’ and ‘Skydiamond’ were misleading.”
Mr Vince said that he is appealing the “utterly baseless” decision, arguing that the complaint is “an attempt to use the ASA for anti-competitive purposes”.
The complaint was brought by the Natural Diamond Council, which represents the diamond mining industry.
Mr Vince said: “Our website and all of our marketing, indeed our very name, makes clear our diamonds come from the sky. Nobody could possibly think they are conventional stones ripped from the bowels of the Earth at enormous environmental cost. This complaint is not based on customer confusion, it comes from the trade body for diamond mining companies.”
The company has now been banned from reusing the adverts. Sky Diamond said it makes diamonds by fusing carbon from the atmosphere with rainwater, which is heated and pressurised in a process powered by solar and wind power provided by Ecotricity.
♦ The billionaire founder of Home Bargains is set to share in a £36m dividend after sales soared at the retailer’s parent company.
Labour donor Tom Morris, whose net worth is reported to reach north of £6bn, will share in the payout, which followed a £355m rise in revenues to £3.8bn at TJ Morris over the year to June 30 2023.