Russian exports of rough diamonds to India increased by well over a fifth, to 4.1m carats, during the first six months of the G7 sanctions.
Total sales were up by 22.23 per cent for January to June 2024, according to the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry. But revenue fell by 15.22 per cent, as prices keep declining, from $614m to $520m.
Russian exports for June alone were 347,620 carats, an increase of almost 32 per cent on the same month last year.
The G7 and EU nations imposed sanctions on all Russian diamonds of 1.0-cts and above, regardless of where they were cut and polished, from 1 January. The threshold was lowered to 0.50-cts and above from 1 September.
Rough diamonds imported from Russia to India can only be sold to markets beyond the G7 and EU.
India’s diamond industry has been calling on the government to allow direct payments to Russia so it can more easily buy sanctioned goods.
Diamond giant De Beers is fully prepared for the expanded G7 restrictions on diamond imports from Russia, which took effect on September 1st. These restrictions now include diamonds weighing 0.5 carats and above, according to Rough&Polished.
De Beers stated that its customers will continue to provide proof of the origin of the diamonds they sell, even as the sanctions now cover rough diamonds weighing 0.5 carats and above, instead of 1 carat and above, as previously stipulated.
The company added that it welcomes the G7’s measures, which stand alongside the diamond industry and diamond-producing nations, aiming to trace the origin of diamonds. “De Beers fully supports the work being carried out by the G7 to prohibit the trade in Russian diamonds, and we are committed to working with the G7, the diamond industry, and our partner governments to ensure there is an effective system put in place,” said De Beers CEO Al Cook.
Africa-focused miner Gem Diamonds has unearthed yet another massive white diamond at its prolific Letšeng mine in Lesotho, just days after another major find.
The 122.2 carat Type II white diamond was recovered over the weekend and is the eleventh greater than 100-carat precious stone mined this year at the operation, the company said.
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Type IIa diamonds are the most valued and collectable precious gemstones, as they contain either very little or no nitrogen atoms in their crystal structure.
The Letšeng mine, owned 70% by Gem Diamonds, is one of the world’s ten largest diamond operations by revenue. At 3,100 metres (10,000 feet) above sea level, it is also one of the world’s most elevated diamond mines.
The operation has a track record of producing large, exceptional white diamonds, which makes it the highest-dollar-per-carat kimberlite diamond mine in the world.
The Perth Mint continues its Jewelled series of coins with a 10 ounce gold Jewelled Turtle coin with a mintage of eight coins.
And it comes with a price tag of $269,000 Australian ($182,229 U.S.).
This is the seventh release in the Jewelled series. It features a handset rare trademarked Argyle Pink Diamond and lustrous white diamonds that form the head and limbs of the three dimensional 18 karat gold turtle.
Each Jewelled Turtle coin is a Proof 10 ounce .9999 fine gold $2,500 denominated coin, with the centerpiece the 18-karat gold sea turtle surrounded by depictions of coral and dory fish.
The turtle’s head and limbs are embellished with 52 white diamonds, and two emeralds for its eyes. Additional white diamonds are set in a ribbon shaped line symbolizing the sea surface, with an Argyle Pink Diamond set at the heart of a stylized sun.
The Jewelled Series is developed each year in association with John Glajz, a Singapore based Argyle Pink Diamonds Icon Partner.
Each Jewelled Turtle coin is presented in a luxury display case adorned with 18 karat gold furnishings and inset with two Argyle Pink Diamond.
For the first time in the series, the coin bears the Dan Thorne effigy of King Charles III, as well as the P125 privy mark for the Perth Mint’s 125th anniversary.
Zimbabwe’s state-owned diamond company is forecasting a 16 per cent increase this year.
The Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC) said it was ramping up production to 5.7m carats in 2024 and would aim to increase that figure to 10m carats next year.
Munashe Shava, ZCDC board chairman, said: “Commodity prices are depressed on the global market and we have come up with various initiatives to offset this worrisome development.
The Chronicle newspaper reported him as saying: “We have ramped up production and this year we have set a target of 5.7m carats and we see this target nearly doubling to 20m carats in the coming year.”
Zimbabwe, the world’s seventh biggest diamond producing nation, recorded an output of 4.9m carats, according to Kimberley Process data, valued at $303m. It exported 5.6m carats valued at $297m.
Earlier this year the US sanctioned Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa for human rights abuses, corruption and smuggling gold and diamonds.
Mnangagwa, 81, who has held office since 2017, insists the claims against him are “defamatory” and “malicious”.
Botswana’s state-owned diamond marketing company will increase its borrowing to fund additional rough purchases.
Finance Minister Peggy Serame said last Thursday (29 August) that the government had arranged a $300m credit facility, with the Standard Chartered Bank for the Okavango Diamond Company (ODC).
It hopes to capitalize on a long-awaited recovery the global diamond market.
At the moment ODC’s limited cash reserves mean it can only buy $70m of its allocation of diamonds produced by Debswana, the 50/50 joint venture between De Beers and the Botswana government.
ODC holds 10 auctions a year to sell its 25% allocation from Debswana. That share is set to double to 50 per cent over the next decade, as part of a deal agreed last year between Botswana and De Beers.
Last October ODC halted its rough sales amid weak demand.
Gem Diamonds has now recovered twice as many +100 cts diamond this year than during the whole of 2023.
The UK-based company today announced a 129.71 carat Type II white diamond from its Letseng mine, in Lesotho.
It’s the 10th +100 cts diamond of 2024. Historically the mine averages eight per year, but last year it recovered only five.
The spike in high-value recoveries has helped push up revenue at Gem. Earlier this month it reported a 9 per cent increase in its first half earnings to $77.9m.
Letseng 70 per cent owned by Gem and 30 per cent by the Lesotho government is the highest dollar per carat kimberlite diamond mine in the world.
Pic courtesy Gem Diamonds, shows the 129.71 ct stone.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has issued new licenses under the Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions Regulations, allowing for the sale of diamond jewellery and loose gem-quality diamonds imported before recent sanctions were implemented. This significant policy shift permits goods that were previously prohibited to re-enter the market.
Under the new guidelines, diamond jewellery purchased before March 1, 2024, as well as loose diamonds of 1 carat or larger bought before that date, and those of at least 0.50 carats purchased before September 1, 2024, can now be sold. The relaxation for loose diamonds will remain in effect until September 1, 2025.
However, starting September 1, 2024, the next phase of G7 diamond sanctions will impose restrictions on all goods of 0.50 carats or above from Russia, regardless of where they are cut and polished. This phase of sanctions is set to take effect next Sunday, despite substantial opposition from various industry stakeholders.
In response, the Jewelers Vigilance Committee has reported that the United States is considering supporting a delay in the implementation of these sanctions. This potential delay, which aligns with the European Union’s proposed extension to March 1, 2025, aims to provide additional time to resolve the intricacies of the sanctions and their impact on the diamond trade.
Assessing the value of a diamond is a job that’s been done by eye for centuries.
But artificial intelligence (AI) is now so sophisticated that it can do the same task faster, cheaper and more accurately.
There can be a huge difference in value even between two diamonds of the same size. That’s why a whole industry has developed, dedicated to grading them.
But advances in machine learning have now made computers more reliable than humans, according to Sarine, a diamond-tech company based in Israel.
Today the vast majority of diamond manufacturers – the businesses that cut and polish rough gems – send their loose stones to grading labs.
They wait a couple of weeks for the diamonds to be returned with certificates listing their key attributes. And they typically pay at least $100 per diamond for the service (depending on size).
Sarine aims to dramatically cuts cost and delays by locating its automated eGrading technology inside factories in a lease arrangement.
Staff operate the machine, which can grade and certify a diamond in a matter of minutes.
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It’s as convenient as using an ATM, says Roni Ben-Ari, deputy CEO & VP products at Sarine.
He says the machines consistently deliver higher quality results than the best grading labs, without the expense of employing gemologists (gemstone experts) or paying for premises, infrastructure and other overheads.
Can’t cheat the system
You may be thinking the diamond factory gets to “mark its own homework” if the grading machine is inhouse, and that it could cheat the system to get a better grade.
But Ben-Ari is adamant that the system’s security is so tight it’s simply not possible for anyone to interfere.
Every diamond is unique – like a fingerprint, a snowflake or DNA – and every diamond is identified by full 360-degree images.
The raw data that Sarine’s machines gather is securely uploaded to the cloud, and only then converted into a grading report.
Grading diamonds objectively with Sarine’s eGrading system.
It’s worth considering what’s at stake here.
An absolute top-quality natural one-carat diamond (a popular size for engagement rings) could set you back $14,000. But you could get a poor-quality diamond of the same size for under $2,000. That’s why grading a diamond is so important.
The 4Cs
Four main criteria determine the value of a diamond. They’re known as the 4Cs – carat (weight), cut (how well the rough stone has been shaped), color (the best diamonds are colorless) and clarity (absence of flaws or blemishes).
Diamonds are valued on the basis of carat, cut, color and clarity.
Color and clarity are the hardest criteria to determine. Labs give diamonds a letter for color (from D to Z) and a label indicating one of 11 levels of clarity (from IF, internally flawless, to I3 for diamonds with the worst flaws or “inclusions”).
Weighing a diamond is straightforward, but the other three Cs can be subjective.
“I can guesstimate that if you sent the same 100 diamonds to the lab over and over again, around 70 percent would get the same grade,” says Ben-Ari.
That leaves 30% where a different lab, or a different day, or a different staff member could give the diamond a different grade – and a different value.
Sarine’s system uses AI to grade clarity.
A lot of biases
“The human eye is a muscle; it gets tired,” says Ben-Ari. “It’s affected by your physical conditions, whether you’re tired or angry, or it’s the beginning of the shift or the second half of the shift.
“There are a lot of biases. It’s very difficult to educate people from different cultures in different locations around the world to grade the same diamond in the same way.
“So the labs invented a very sophisticated process where two people grade the diamond. When they agree, that’s the diamond grade and when they don’t, they bring in a third person.”
But it’s a labor-intensive business. Sarine, already an established world leader in guiding diamond cutters to get the highest value from a rough gem, realized it could develop a better way of doing things.
Sarine’s loupe doesn’t get tired like a human eye would.
AI can grade diamonds
The company, founded in 1988 and based in Hod Hasharon, central Israel, embarked on the mammoth task of teaching AI how to grade diamonds.
That involved showing the AI model more than 30,000 diamonds that had already been graded by GIA (Gemological Institute of America) the world’s biggest lab. The more diamonds they showed it, the better the results.
Sarine introduced eGrading machines, using AI to grade diamonds.
Because Sarine deals in technology and not in physical diamonds, all those diamonds to train the computer model had to be borrowed.
That’s why Sarine’s first eGrading machines, installed in mid-2022, were located in factories in India, where over 90% of all diamonds are cut and polished.
“We started in southern India, where we have a facility with 400 employees to provide customer support,” says Ben-Ari.” The next step will be a rollout to Botswana and Namibia, both counties which mine and manufacture diamonds.”
Lab-grown diamonds
We’ve been talking so far about “natural” diamonds, but what about lab-grown diamonds?
Natural diamonds formed miles below the Earth’s surface under high pressure and high temperature in a process that took over more than a billion years.
Lab-grown diamonds are created within weeks, are optically and physically identical to natural diamonds, and now sell for a fraction of the price.
They have driven the need for cheaper grading because in many cases the cost of an ordinary certificate outweighs the cost of manufacturing the diamond.
There are, however, some complex technical differences between natural and lab-grown diamonds, which means Sarine technology can grade them in the lab but not yet remotely with eGrading at factories. Sarine is working on an AI fix for that.
LUCARA RECOVERS EPIC 2,492 CARAT DIAMOND FROM THE KAROWE MINE
Lucara Diamond Corp. (“Lucara” or the “Company”) is thrilled to announce the recovery of an exceptional 2,492 carat diamond from its Karowe Diamond Mine in Botswana. This remarkable find, one of the largest rough diamonds ever unearthed, was detected and recovered by the Company’s Mega Diamond Recovery (“MDR”) X-ray Transmission (“XRT”) technology, installed in 2017 to identify and preserve large, high-value diamonds. The stone was recovered from the processing of EM/PK(S) kimberlite, the dominant ore type that Lucara will continue to target during the first years of the Company’s underground mining operations.
This discovery underscores Karowe’s reputation as a world-class asset and reaffirms Lucara’s position as a leading producer of large, exceptional diamonds. This latest recovery joins an impressive roster of other significant finds from the mine, including the 1,758 carat Sewelô and the 1,109 carat Lesedi La Rona.
William Lamb, President and CEO of Lucara, commented on this historic discovery: “We are ecstatic about the recovery of this extraordinary 2,492 carat diamond. This find not only showcases the remarkable potential of our Karowe Mine, but also upholds our strategic investment in cutting-edge XRT technology. The ability to recover such a massive, high-quality stone intact demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach to diamond recovery and our commitment to maximizing value for our shareholders and stakeholders.”
Mr. Lamb added, “This discovery reinforces Karowe’s position as a truly world-class diamond mine and highlights the continued success of our operational and underground development strategy.”
Botswana’s diamond industry delivers wide-ranging socio-economic benefits to the country that extend well beyond the mining sector. Its influence supports national development by funding critical areas such as education and healthcare.
This discovery symbolizes Botswana’s continued ascent as a global leader in diamond production. It represents not only the unparalleled wealth found in Botswana’s soil, but also the remarkable progress the nation has made in developing its diamond industry for the benefit of its citizens.
This news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Lauren Freeman, PhD. Pr. Sci. Nat., Vice-President, Mineral Resources of the Company and a “Qualified Person” for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101.
