‘Lack of supportive laws hinder diamond processing’

THE setting up of a vibrant diamond beneficiation industry has “greatly” suffered from lack of supportive legislation for local cutting and polishing of diamonds, Aurex Holdings, one of the licensed company to beneficiate the precious stones has said.

It also said lack of industry infrastructural set up with regards to certification of cut and polished diamonds as well as lack of a national strategy for the marketing of locally cut and polished diamonds has also negatively affected the development of the industry.

“It is pleasing to note that there is focus on addressing these issues for the benefit of the economy,” general manager Engineer Pasipaipa Gerald Nhemachena-Munhumutema said.

Some of the issues being addressed include the certification of the cut and polished stones to accredited international standards required by buyers, participation or having a presence at the established markets such as Antwerp in Belgium, Dubai and Johannesburg in South Africa and networking with large consuming jewellery companies for cut and polished diamonds as found in India, Italy, China and the eastern Europe.

Beneficiation is one of the key pillars of the ZimAsset, Zimbabwe’s medium term economic blueprint.

Zimbabwe is believed to hold huge diamond reserves in the eastern parts of the country where the Government and private investors have been extracting the mineral.

The Government has since discontinued the partnerships to enhance as it seeks to enhance accountability of revenues from the previous stones. It is estimated that the country could have lost several billions though underhand dealings by diamond miners in Chiadzwa.

Aurex commissioned the state of the art diamond factory in 2016 and is now in full operation.

The factory initial capacity is to cut and polish between 2 000 and 10 000 carats of rough diamonds per month depending on stone size. He said capacity utilization of the factory was much depended on the country getting certain fundamentals “right in as far as the taking of the county’s value added diamonds to the international markets is concerned.”

“The international markets need intimate knowledge and established brands to ride on.

“In its consideration of re-entry into the international market, Aurex has been engaging prospective technical partners with ready markets for cut and polished diamonds,” he said.

Aurex beneficiation plant operated at full scale, for the employed resources, for the last half of 2016 to December. During this time the plant worked on rough diamond parcels from ZCDC on an existing toll manufacturing arrangement. However, this toll arrangement is based on the ability to establish markets for the polished diamonds.

Aurex is currently working around the challenges of marketing the polished diamonds to unlock the inflow of more rough diamonds into the factory for value-addition.