The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
Craftspeople at Sudbury’s Crossworks Manufacturing Ltd. plant will soon be cutting and polishing diamonds for the world’s largest jewelry company, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd.
Crossworks president Uri Ariel has just signed a long-term supply and licensing agreement with the Chinese firm to provide Crossworks’ patented hearts and arrows ideal cut square diamond to the company.
Under the terms of the agreement, Chow Tai Fook will have exclusive distribution rights to sell the uniquely cut diamonds through its extensive retail network in Greater China. Crossworks Manufacturing Ltd., a member of the HRA Group of Companies, is a Canadian company with five polishing facilities in Canada, Vietnam and Namibia. One of the Canadian plants is located in downtown Sudbury, where about 35 cutters process 10% of the diamonds mined by De Beers in the James Bay Lowlands.
Crossworks designed the square cut hearts and arrows diamond to enhance the brilliance, fire and scintillation in a square cut diamond, company spokesman Dylan Dix said in a release.
“The Crossworks’ patented ideal square cut diamond has achieved the grade of ‘ideal’ for light performance from leading gemmological laboratories. It offers consumers an eight-sided square cut diamond that exhibits eight hearts and eight arrows as evidence of its perfect symmetry,” said Dix in a statement.
The new deal “absolutely” means more diamond processing will be done in Sudbury, said Dix in an email.
“We are excited a Canadian company can be competitive at the highest levels of our business,” he said.
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