De Beers has reduced prices for smaller rough diamonds at this week’s sight, with manufacturers saying the adjustments aren’t enough to ease their profitability challenges. The miner cut the price of 3-grainer (0.75-carat) and smaller goods by 4% to 6%, market insiders told Rapaport News Tuesday. In 4- to 6-grainers (1 to 1.5 carats), the price decline was around 4%, they estimated.
Prices of 5- to 10-carat rough increased slightly, though this partly reflected modifications to the assortments, they added. Like-for-like price movements are hard to estimate because changes to the product mix can skew them, the sources cautioned. De Beers declined to comment.
Thin margins
The miner’s prices of 3-grainers and smaller rough have remained relatively high in recent months. The polished diamonds they produce survived better than the rest of the market during last year’s industry-wide downturn. As a result, De Beers had left prices for this category mostly untouched for a while.
For the rest of this article: https://rapaport.com/news/de-beers-cuts-prices-of-smaller-rough-diamonds/