India’s exports of polished diamonds suffered a further drop in May, down by almost 15 per cent to $1.47bn.
But the year-on-year rate of decline shows some signs of slowing, according to new figures from the GJEPC (Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council).
It fell 20 per cent in January, 28 per cent in February, 27 per cent in March and 17 per cent in April.
Diamonds are faring significantly less well than India’s overall gems and jewelry sector, which saw revenue for April slip by 6 per cent to $2.48bn.
Manufacturers bought more diamonds year-on-year in April and May (up almost 2 per cent by volume) but the price slump means imports are down almost 10 per cent by value are down by almost 10 per cent to $2.39bn.
A passenger at an airport in India was caught with almost 1kg (2.2lbs) of gold, most of it concealed inside their body.
They were intercepted at Bir Tikendrajit International Airport, Imphal, in the northeastern state of Manipur, after a specific tip-off.
Customs officers recovered one packet of gold, in a paste form, within the airport complex, and found two more hidden inside the passenger’s body after a thorough examination.
The gold packets were shaped like eggs, wrapped in rubber sheaths and were found hidden inside the passenger’s rectum.
The passenger has not been identified, and Customs did not say where they’d traveled from.
The total weight of the gold was 972.28 grams, with a market value of Rs 70,31,601 ($84,000).
India will lead demand for natural diamonds in 2024, says David Kellie, CEO of Natural Diamond Council (NDC), as US buyers increasingly switch to lab grown.
“The Indian market remains the strongest growth market in the world because of its strong financial position and changing demographics,” he told The Economic Times, in India.
“Indian women are now financially stronger, and they are driving the demand. The key economic indicators in the US are not yet favourable for a demand recovery in diamond purchase.”
Kellie (pictured) predicts a polarization between the natural and lab grown markets, with a price difference currently at 80 per cent to 90 per cent.
Natural diamonds will become increasingly rare, he said, with no new mines in prospect, and with miners digging deeper, and spending more, to reach remaining deposits.
India saw a slump in polished-diamond exports but an increase in rough imports in October as global demand remained slow and manufacturers brought goods into the country ahead of a two-month shipment freeze.
Polished exports fell 33% year on year to $1.26 billion, the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) reported earlier this month. Inbound rough shipments rose 9% to $1.02 billion despite a two-month voluntary pause on imports aimed at reducing inventories. The policy came into effect on October 15.
A decline in rough prices ahead of the optional freeze and the Diwali holiday created an opportunity for Indian companies to buy, added GJEPC chairman Vipul Shah.
About the data: India, the world’s largest diamond-cutting center, is a net importer of rough and a net exporter of polished. As such, net polished exports — representing polished exports minus polished imports — will usually be a positive number. Net rough imports — calculated as rough imports minus rough exports — will also generally be in surplus. The net diamond account is total rough and polished exports minus total imports. It is India’s diamond trade balance, and shows the added value the nation creates by manufacturing rough into polished.
Indian jewelry giant Titan Company will up its stake in e-tailer CaratLane to 98%, acquiring the share it didn’t already own for INR 46.21 billion ($557.2 million).
Titan, which already owns 71% of the online jewelry retailer, plans to buy an additional 27% in an all-cash deal, it said Saturday in a notice to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). It intends to complete the buyout by October 31, subject to requisite approvals.
The deal values CaratLane at INR 170.01 billion ($2.05 billion), according to Rapaport calculations.
Incorporated in 2007, CaratLane operates in India and in the US through a local subsidiary. Titan first took a stake in the business in 2016.
A new office building in India’s diamond city Surat in Gujarat, where 90% of the world’s diamonds are manufactured has surpassed the Pentagon as the largest structure of the kind.
Built over 7.1 million square feet of floor space, the Surat Diamond Bourse (SDB) has a big leg up on the 6.5 million square feet headquarters building of the US department of defense in Arlington, Virginia. The Pentagon was the world’s largest building for 80 years before it got dethroned.
The 15-story structure, featuring a succession of nine rectangular structures spilling out from a central “spine,” cost a whopping 32-billion-rupee ($388 million) to develop and build.
Indian architecture firm Morphogenesis stopped and started construction over four years because over pandemic-related delays. The building is finally due to open its doors in November 2023, with prime minister Narendra Modi due to inaugurate it.
Quotable: Narendra Modi lauds Surat Diamond Bourse “Surat Diamond Bourse showcases the dynamism and growth of Surat’s diamond industry. It is also a testament to India’s entrepreneurial spirit. It will serve as a hub for trade, innovation and collaboration, further boosting our economy and creating employment opportunities.” Prime minister Narendra Modi, who was Gujarat’s chief minister from 2001 to 2014, quote-tweeted a video of the Surat premises yesterday.
Working in the Surat Diamond Bourse, by the digits 4,700 office spaces: Office spaces in the Surat Diamond Bourse, which can also double up as small workshops for cutting and polishing diamonds. The offices were all purchased by diamond companies prior to construction, project CEO Mahesh Gadhavi.
65,000: Diamond professionals, including cutters, polishers and traders, that can work on the premises at a given time. Besides offices, the workers also have access to dining, retail, wellness and conference facilities
9: Number of 1.5-acre courtyards with seating and water features that can serve as casual meeting places for traders
131: Number of elevators on the premises
7 minutes: The maximum amount of time it takes to reach any office from any of the building’s entry gates, according to Sonali Rastogi, co-founder of the Indian architecture firm Morphogenesis that designed the behemoth building. In a democratic move, the offices were assigned to business via a lottery system
3 times: How much bigger SDB is compared its counterpart in Mumbai, Bharat Diamond Burse (BDB)
400: The small number of merchants that were willing to move in during the touted November 2022 opening, which led to the opening being postponed. Mumbai’s Palanpuri diamantaires are staying put because they do not want to incur establishment cost, transport cost, and take on overheads of maintenance when the trading business is struggling.
Jewelers in India have shattered a world record with a ring made of 50,907 diamonds.
The Eutierria Ring has more than twice as many diamonds as the previous record holder, The Touch of Ami, with 24,679 diamonds. Both rings were made in India.
The new ring, created by H.K. Designs and Hari Krishna Exports, was certified last month by Guinness World Records as the ring with the most diamonds.
The ring took nine months to design and make, entirely of recycled materials – 460.55 grams of gold and 130.19 carats of diamonds all re-purposed from customer returns.
It is designed as a sunflower with four layers of petals, a shank, two diamond discs, and a butterfly.
It has been certified by IGI and has a retail value of $785,645, according to a press release issued jointly by both companies.
It takes its name, Eutierria, from a term describing a positive feeling of oneness with the earth.
India’s only diamond mine will put up to 84,000 carats a year
Majhgawan-Panna, India’s only diamond mine which was shot down at the end of 2020, will resume production in July 2023 “with a forecast output of up to 84,000 carats a year,” IDEX Online reports.
Majhgawan-Panna, located near the town of Panna in Madhya Pradesh, was closed after environmental clearances “lapsed following concerns from the nearby Panna Tiger Reserve.” Despite this, the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), India’s biggest iron ore merchant miner, plans to resume work there.
According to the report, repeated concerns by the National Wildlife Board has caused mining at the mine to halt “stopped several times over the last 50 years.” In FY2021, the mine produced 13,681 carats.
Plummeting demand for cut and polished diamonds in the West and China has pushed some 20,000 workers out of work in the last one month in Surat, where 80% of the diamonds sold globally are polished.
Surat, the main centre of India’s diamond industry, offers employment to some 800,000 workers in its 4,000-odd cutting and polishing units. But work has been drying up, forcing the units to work at 60-70% capacity, said Damji Mavani, secretary of Surat Diamond Association (SDA). It also means fewer workers are needed.
“Fear is looming large in the diamond city of Surat whether the recession of 2008 will be repeated this year too,” said Bhavesh Tank, vice president of Diamond Workers Union, Gujarat. “Orders are fewer and so the workload is less. Therefore, the units are reducing workforce. Some units are cutting down work days so that they do not have to pay the workers on days when they are not working.”
According to Tank, nearly 20,000 diamond workers in Surat have lost jobs in the last one month.
The US is the biggest market for cut and polished diamonds, followed by China.
India’s diamond exports began slowing in November last year. According to data from the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), overall gross exports of cut and polished diamonds in the April to November period of FY23 declined by 5.43% from the year-ago period.
Another reason is the dropping price of the polished pieces. While the price of rough diamonds continues to be high, that of the polished ones have softened due to low demand, which is impacting the margins of diamantaires and forcing them to reduce workforce.
Mavani of SDA said the workers who have lost their jobs will find work in other areas. “There is a 30% vacancy in most of the factories,” he said.
However, there’s an air of uncertainty in Surat due to the fear of recession in the US, Europe and China. “We do not know when the situation will improve. It may take one year for a robust uptick in demand from overseas markets,” the SDA secretary said.
“With the pandemic in China making a comeback and there are no signs of respite from the war between Russia and Ukraine, inflation soaring in some parts of the world, we are out there for some tough times,” said Vipul Shah, chairman, GJE ..
Shah said the drop in price of polished diamond is eating into the margins of traders.
Traders said business in polished diamonds is also sluggish because of the seasonal lull, lingering economic uncertainty, and the slowdown in China. Although China eased its Covid-19 lockdowns last month, another outbreak stifled the recovery ahead of their Lunar New Year.
India, which cuts or polishes about 90% of the diamonds sold in the world, is ramping up sales of laboratory-made gems as demand from the US surges and they become more accepted in other markets.
Exports of polished lab-grown diamonds may double in the current financial year started April 1 from $1.3 billion in the prior year, Vipul Shah, vice chairman of the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council, said in an interview. “We have a huge potential to grow exports to $7 billion-$8 billion in the next few years on the back of US demand and acceptability in the UK and Australia,” he said.
“It is going to be treated as a fashionable jewelry, which is affordable to the youngsters, and that’s the way the market is going to shift,” Shah said.
Diamonds grown in labs represent a small portion of the market currently — India shipped nearly $24 billion of polished diamonds mined naturally last year. Still, the much cheaper variety has been growing its share as it has the same physical characteristics and chemical makeup as mined stones, with experts needing a machine to distinguish between synthesized and mined gems.
Lab-made diamonds are developed from a carbon seed placed in a microwave chamber and superheated into a glowing plasma ball. The process creates particles that crystallize into diamonds in weeks.
Exports of polished lab-grown diamonds from India jumped about 70% in the April-July period to $622.7 million, while those of cut and polished mined diamonds fell around 3% to $8.2 billion during the same period, GJEPC data showed.
One advantage of the man-made gem is that it has a tracking system that helps monitor the supply chain and maintain consumer confidence in the gems.
“Commercial gem-quality earth-mined diamonds are being replaced completely by lab-grown diamonds,” said Ritesh Shah, director at ALTR, one of the first global lab-grown brands to start business in India. The product’s affordability, low carbon-footprint, size and fine quality offer a big draw for buyers, with the US the front-runner in the shift in consumer behavior, he said.
From a handful of companies growing diamonds in labs in the mid-2000s, there are now about 25 such growers in India, he said. The country contributes about 15% of the global production of lab-grown diamonds, according to the GJEPC.
