The Diamond Certification Laboratory of Australia (DCLA)
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De Beers public brand identity, has been renamed ”De Beers Jewellers” to reflect the companys retail chain.
De Beers acquired fully the formerly known De Beers Diamond Jewellers in 2017. Which was a partnership with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
The London headquartered retailer announced Stephen Lussier, as De Beers executive vice president for marketing in charge of the operation.
Lucara Diamonds have sold two exceptional large rough diamonds at the $32.5 million tender.
The tender included a 327 carat rough diamond that sold for over $10 million USD.
Lucara said the 10 stones ranging from 40.4 carats to a 472.37 carat rough stone a combined 1,453.06 carats, sold for an average price of $22,356 per carat.
The top seller was the 327.48 carat white diamond, which earned $30,900 per carat total $10.1 million.
Another exceptional size 472.37 carat light brown stone also sold but the miner has not publish its price.
Lucapa Diamonds said it had made USD $2 million after selling rough diamonds recovered at its prolific Lulo mine in Angola.
Sale has taken gross sales proceeds from the Angola based mine so far this year to $15.9 million.
Empresa Nacional de Diamantes and Rosas & Petalas, Lucapa all partners in th emine have sold 1,782 carats at an average price of $1,150 per carat.
The mine is located 150km from Alrosa’s Catoca mine the world’s fourth largest diamond mine, hosts type 2a diamonds which account for less than 1% of global supply.
Angola is now the world’s forth largest diamond producer by value and sixth by volume.
Shares in Petra Diamonds climbed around 5% on Wednesday after the South African miner said shareholders had approved a rights issue to raise about $170 million to help cut its debt burden.
Petra Diamonds has more than $600 million of debt it accumulated by building a new plant and digging deeper at its flagship Cullinan diamond mine.
Petra Diamonds is owner of the iconic Cullinan mine, where the world’s biggest ever diamond was found in 1905, has accumulated a hefty debt in the last 18 months as it borrowed heavily to expand its mines, known for some major recent findings,
Petra Diamonds has more than $600 million of debt it accumulated by building a new plant and digging deeper at Cullinan. Its lenders waived covenants for December 2017 and relaxed them for this year’s measurements.
Petra Diamonds also faced illegal mining at its operations, weak prices, a surging South African rand and setbacks in Tanzania, where the government seized last year a diamond parcel from it Williamson mine of about 71,000 carats. The move, part of the country’s ongoing probe into alleged wrongdoing in the diamond and tanzanite sectors, has been costly for Petra, as it shares lost around half of their value last year after the incident.
The exceptional 20.47 carat D colour type IIa old mine brilliant cut, diamond has sold for USD $2.7 million.
The D flawless diamond was the top seller at Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction in New York on Tuesday.
The Christie’s pre-sale estimate for the diamond was $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
Two men stole a 20 carat diamond from an exhibitor’s booth at the JCK Las Vegas trade show, the Jewelers’ Security Alliance (JSA) said last week.
The men were able to slide open an unlocked display case on June 2 while employees were not looking, the organization alleged. One man then sat down at the booth and began speaking with an employee, while the second placed a catalog on top of the showcase. The second man then reached into the case and removed the stone.
The JSA has distributed pictures of both alleged thieves, but neither has been identified yet.
Image: Jewelers’ Security Alliance
Botswana Diamonds has been awarded the priority 2.5 ha Mooikloof kimberlite pipe concession. Using recently developed exploration techniques it will re-assess this high potential pipe.
The award of the Mooikloof Prospecting Licence is an important development for Botswana Diamonds.
Mooikloof was last prospected in 1986. The adjacent Oaks mine was owned and successfully operated by De Beers. The Oaks mine had a grade of 53 cpht at a value of $156 per carat.
The large flagship Venetia mine, operated by De Beers, is close by and in the same general geology.
Based on Botswana Diamond’s experience elsewhere, it suspects that past explorers may have systematically under estimated the kimberlite pipe size, grade and diamond quality of the Mooikloof kimberlite.
It will deploy state of the art exploration techniques to reassess the Mooikloof kimberlite, and maybe open another by passed kimberlite pipe development.
Botswana Diamonds has now received the Technical Economic Evaluation Report on the Thorny River Project.
The deposit is between 1.2 and 2 Mt, the grade is between 46 and 74 cpht and carat values between US$120 and $220 per carat.
The Technical Economic Evaluation Report indicated positive economics could potentially be achieved using the top end of the grade and value ranges, assuming additional kimberlite volume of similar grade and value can be defined with further exploration.
While not a Scoping Study as Botswana Diamonds had previously envisaged in the announcements dated 15 February 2018 and 21 March 2018, the Technical Economic Evaluation Report has provided the company’s directors with sufficient information to conclude that the Thorny River Project requires further investigation.
Consequently, the directors are considering the company’s various technical and commercial options, which will be studied simultaneously with ongoing exploration.
Drilling at Ontevreden confirmed the existence of a kimberlite pipe, but showed the pipe to be smaller than the previously indicated geophysical anomaly.
Given Botswana Diamond’s attractive priorities elsewhere, it now proposes no further work on Ontevreden.
“Significant progress has been made on our joint venture projects in South Africa,” comments Botswana Diamonds chairman, John Teeling.
“Analysis shows that a mine on the Thorny River deposit could be profitable assuming positive results from additional exploration. Now we must refine the volume, grade and value estimates while working on the mining model.
“But modern mineral exploration technology is not a magic bullet. Modern geophysics indicated a 0.7 ha pipe at Ontevreden. Our drilling confirmed a smaller pipe, which is not currently commercial”.
Source: miningreview
Zimbabwe’s rough diamond production will more than triple to 11 million carats in 2025, according to the nation’s state-owned mining operation.
Output will grow at an average of 21% per year from 3 million carats in 2018, a spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC) told Rapaport News Monday.
“This growth is anchored on investment of around $400 million across the entire diamond value chain in the next five years,” the spokesperson said.
In addition, the ZCDC named Killiam Ukama, an engineer, as the chairman of the ZCDC’s new board.
The ZCDC produced 1.8 million carats in 2017 from the controversial Marange diamond fields, where security forces killed more than 200 illegal workers in 2008. The company suspended sales for nine months last year as it carried out a restructuring, and resumed tenders in the first quarter of this year.
Source: diamonds.net
De Beers, which almost single handedly created the allure of diamonds as rare, expensive and the symbol of eternal love, now wants to sell you some party jewelry that is anything but.
The company announced today that it will start selling man-made diamond jewelry at a fraction of the price of mined gems, marking a historic shift for the world’s biggest diamond miner, which vowed for years that it wouldn’t sell stones created in laboratories. The strategy is designed to undercut rival lab-diamond makers, who having been trying to make inroads into the $80 billion gem industry.
De Beers will target younger spenders with its new diamond brand and try to capture customers that have been resistant to splurging on expensive jewelry. The company is betting that it can split the market with mined gems in luxury settings and engagement rings at the top, and lab-made fashion jewelry aimed at millennials at the bottom.
“Lab grown are not special, they’re not real, they’re not unique. You can make exactly the same one again and again,” Bruce Cleaver, chief executive officer of De Beers, said in an interview Tuesday.
Unlike imitation gems such as cubic zirconia, diamonds grown in labs have the same physical characteristics and chemical makeup as mined stones. They’re made from a carbon seed placed in a microwave chamber and superheated into a glowing plasma ball. The process creates particles that can eventually crystallize into diamonds in weeks. The technology is so advanced that experts need a machine to distinguish between synthesized and mined gems.
A host of lab-grown diamond makers and retailers have sprung up in recent years. Diamond Foundry, one of the biggest producers, grows diamonds in a California laboratory and has been backed by Leonardo DiCaprio. Warren Buffett’s Helzberg’s Diamond Shops Inc. also sells the stones.
Customers are currently “confused” by the difference between mined and lab-produced diamonds, Cleaver said. De Beers is hoping to create big price gap with its new product, which will sell under the name Lightbox in the U.S. A 1-carat man-made diamond sells for about $4,000 and a similar natural diamond fetches roughly $8,000. The lab diamonds from De Beers will sell for about $800 a carat.
Still, De Beers says that its move isn’t to disrupt existing lab-diamond producers, but create a small, profitable business in its own right.
“Given we are the lowest-cost producer, we can make a good business out of this,” Cleaver said. “We have the tools, why wouldn’t we do this?”
De Beers is so adamant that the man-made diamonds are not competing with mined stones that it will not grade them in the traditional way. That’s a stark contrast to current man-made sellers who offer ratings such as clarity and color, replicating terminology used for natural stones.
“We’re not grading our lab-grown diamonds because we don’t think they deserve to be graded,” Cleaver said. “They’re all the same.”
The pricing strategy will also be different. De Beers plans to charge $200 for a quarter-carat, $400 for a half and $800 for a carat, another sharp break from natural stones that rise exponentially in price the bigger the diamond gets.
While De Beers has never sold man-made diamonds for jewelry before, it’s very good at making them. The company’s Element Six unit is one of the world’s leading producers of synthetic diamonds, which are mostly used for industrial purposes. It has also been producing gem-quality stones for years to help it tell the difference between natural and man-made types and to reassure consumers that they’re buying the real thing.
Man-made gems currently make up a small part of the diamond market, but demand is increasing. Global diamond production was about 142 million carats last year, according to analyst Paul Zimnisky. That compares with lab production of less than 4.2 million carats, according to Bonas & Co.
De Beers has been researching lab-made diamonds since the end of World War II and accelerated its work after a Swedish company synthesized the first diamond in 1953. The company has focused on lab diamonds for industrial uses, but also kept investing in technology for jewelry-grade gems.
The shift to lab-diamond jewelry comes at a sensitive time for De Beers and its relationship with Botswana, the source of three quarters of its diamonds. The two have a sales agreement that lets the company market and sell gems from Botswana, giving De Beers its power over global prices. The deal will soon be up for negotiation and Botswana is likely to push for more concessions.
On Tuesday, De Beers said it had extensive talks with Botswana about the decision to sell man-made diamonds and the country supports the move.
Source: bloomberg.com
The Belle Époque diamond tiara which belonged to the crown princess of Yugoslavia, will go up for sale at Christie’s London summer auction.
The Headpiece dates back to 1905 is part of the collection of the princes of Orléans Braganza, and features pear shaped and rose cut diamonds cut in the old style.
Estimate for the tiara by the auction house range from $186,900 to $280,350.