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At the recent JCK show, I had a joint interview with two of the most important people in Botswana’s diamond industry: Mmetla Masire, CEO of Okavango Diamond Company (ODC), the state-owned seller, and Andrew Motsomi, managing director of Debswana, the De Beers–Botswana joint venture that oversees De Beers’ mines in the country. Masire and Motsomi […]
US President Donald Trump has extended the deadline for implementing tariffs from July 9 to August 1, while threatening to raise the rates of at least 14 countries, two of which are major exporters of diamonds and gemstones. In an executive order Monday, the president said it was “necessary and appropriate” to extend the suspension by three […]
In the battle for market share, the Natural Diamond Council has resorted to increasingly provocative advertising, aiming to differentiate natural diamonds from their lab-grown counterparts. One recent ad boldly proclaimed that natural diamonds have “rizz” while lab-grown stones are merely “fizz.” This kind of in-your-face marketing has sparked intense debate, with some applauding it as […]
Following De Beers’ annual Friday breakfast at the JCK show in Las Vegas, CEO Al Cook spoke with JCK about the flurry of initiatives he announced at the event, plus recent reports about sightholder deals and possible attempts by two former De Beers CEOs to purchase the company.. Any thoughts on the reports that two of your predecessors, Bruce Cleaver and […]
Source: Richemont
Seven years after its introduction sent shock waves through the industry, De Beers is closing the Lightbox lab-grown diamond business. As part of the closure process, De Beers will sell certain assets, including inventory. At press time, Lightbox’s site was still up, but De Beers CEO Al Cook tells JCK it will cease functioning within the coming months. At JCK Las […]
The World Diamond Council (WDC), the U.S. based organization representing the international natural diamond value chain, acknowledges the U.S. Government’s emphasis on fair and reciprocal trade and advocates for policies that support strengthening American manufacturing to deliver tangible benefits to U.S. businesses, workers and consumers. • More than 200,000 U.S. jobs in jeopardy • Industry […]
The European Union will not include polished diamonds in the countermeasure package it has put together in response to the new US reciprocal tariffs. The move would have caused “significant harm” to Belgium’s diamond industry, without “meaningfully impacting” the US in return, the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) said Wednesday. “We are extremely pleased and […]
Francois Curiel has spent 55 years on the auction block, selling the world’s rarest natural diamonds. When you ask Francois Curiel, one of the leading auctioneers of our time, if he still feels a thrill stepping on the block for Christie’s diamond auctions after 55 years in the game, he answers with a knowing smile. […]
The World Diamond Council is devoting the sixth article of its “Diamond Empowerment” series to the diamonds of Canada. “Diamond Empowerment” is a series of in-depth, well-researched case studies analyzing the contribution that the diamond mining industry makes to sustainable development in the countries where it is present. The discovery of diamonds in Canada’s Northwest […]
The outgoing year was clearly a particularly challenging one. It required diamond industry companies to reconsider their future and created an opportunity to pivot towards reinventing diamonds as a true luxury item. The coming year should be the year of realignment. in 2024, the diamond industry, from producing countries to retailers, was rattled in 2024. […]
De Beers has stripped around 10 sightholders of their rough-diamond allocations for 2025 and is planning to offer fewer goods overall, market insiders told Rapaport News on Sunday. Those companies will retain their sightholder status, but the miner will not give them a consistent allotment of supply because they did not buy enough in 2024, the sources […]