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Diamonds – Mining, Lab-Grown and Conflict/Blood

Court sides with environmental groups in ongoing De Beers lawsuit – by Elena De Luigi (Timmins Press – January 13, 2020)

https://www.timminspress.com/

“There needs to be accountability. We need our regulators to step up and do their job.”

The courts have ruled in favour of an environmental group that accused De Beers Canada of allegedly failing to report mercury monitoring data collected at the Victor Diamond Mine to the provincial regulator. The Victor Diamond Mine is located on wetlands along the Attawapiskat River near Attawapiskat First Nation on the James Bay Coast.

Timmins provincial court Justice David A. Thomas granted the appeal made by Trevor Hesselink, the director of Wildlands League, the non-profit organization that accused De Beers in 2015 of breaching a section of the Ontario Water Resources Act on an ongoing basis between June 2009 and July 2016.

Hesselink alleged DeBeers failed to self-monitor and report on the mine’s “effluent discharge,” specifically the levels of mercury and methyl mercury seeping into the Attawapiskat River.

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Outlook 2020: Diamond crisis averted, bigger crisis looms – by Michael McCrae (Kitco News – December 26, 2019)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) – The closing of the Argyle Mine in Australia should jump-start the suffering diamond market, said Paul Zimnisky, independent diamond analyst and consultant, who talked to Kitco earlier this month.

Last month, Rio Tinto announced November’s tender from its exhausted Argyle Mine, which produces around 90% of the world’s pink diamonds, which are the most expensive gems on the market. Argyle mine is also the world’s biggest diamond producer by volume, largely accounting for low-value diamonds.

“I think that’s probably by far the most anticipated supply catalyst for the industry,” said Zimnisky. Oversupply hit the diamond market hard in 2019. De Beers reported a 26% revenue drop, and Quebec diamond-producer Stornoway was forced to file for creditor protection due to weak revenues.

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Everything You Need To Know About Natural Diamonds – by Eliza Huber (Refinery29.com – December 18, 2019)

https://www.refinery29.com/

From the early ‘90s until 2000, there was a high cost involved with buying a diamond — and we’re not talking about the price tag. If there was ever a purchase that you’d want to be proud of, diamonds would be it. After all, they’re exchanged as a symbol of love and commitment, and passed down through generations.

But conflict diamonds — diamonds mined in a war zone to finance militant activities — cast a shadow on the glamorous world of luxury jewellery. Unfortunately, if your diamond was sourced in a war-torn country like Sierra Leone, Angola, or the Democratic Republic of Congo in the ‘90s, it could be a symbol of something much more dismal.

Amidst the growing consciousness of consumers and brands alike, the industry has changed — a lot. In 2000, the Kimberley Process (KP) was established to act as a global trade authority against conflict diamond mining. Today, it represents 81 countries, with the European Union counting as one unit, and is responsible for nearly eradicating the practice, preventing around 99.8% of the global production of conflict diamonds, according to the organisation’s website.

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Alrosa and Everledger introduce program for blockchain-enabled diamonds – by Elizabeth Cope (Global Mining Review – December 17, 2019)

https://www.globalminingreview.com/

Alrosa and Everledger are introducing a WeChat Mini Program to Chinese retailers, demonstrating the ability of blockchain technology to enable the purchase of diamonds with transparency of their origin, characteristics and ownership history.

Created by diamond producer Alrosa and technology company Everledger, the program pilot aims to provide transparent and secure diamond information for potentially a billion active WeChat users. It is also the first product to capitalise on the synergy between Everledger and their new investor, Tencent, which operates the WeChat social platform.

The program pilot will showcase diamonds from Alrosa, enabling full traceability from mine to consumer. It will be offered as a white label API for jewellery manufacturers and retailers in China who wish to offer consumers more innovative and insightful stories about their products and their brand.

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Alrosa to mine first diamonds from Angola in mid-2020 as market “improving” – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – December 11, 2019)

https://www.mining.com/

The world’s top diamond producer by output, Alrosa (MCX:ALRS) said on Wednesday it planned to start trial mining at a new section of its Luaxe deposit in Angola by mid-2020.

The Russian miner and its partner Catoca Mining — the country’s state-owned diamond company — found Luaxe’s Luele pipe in 2013. They have since been analyzing the deposit’s potential, which they believe may turn out to be the largest diamond discovery in the last 60 years.

Luaxe is located 25 km from the giant Catoca operation — Angola’s largest diamond mine — and is estimated to have the potential to yield up to 350 million carats of diamonds during its productive life. Next year alone, the mine is expected to produce 1 million carats of diamonds worth $90 million, Alrosa said in a workshop hosted by the company.

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I’m a Jewelry Nerd, So I Went to Africa to Learn Firsthand About Diamond Mines – by Lauren Eggertsen (Who What Where.com – December 5, 2019)

https://www.whowhatwear.com/

Unless you work in the jewelry industry, chances are everything you know about diamond mines is based on hearsay, stereotypes, or, if you’re really out of the loop, the movie Blood Diamond. The misconceptions surrounding this industry are monstrous, and up until recently, I knew little to nothing about what really goes into mining diamonds.

Am I a jewelry nerd? Yes. But no article found on the internet could have educated me as well as my recent trip to Africa where I got to see a diamond mine firsthand and ask all the questions I had been dying for someone to explain to me.

Forevermark, a subsidiary diamond company within De Beers Group, took me to its Orapa Mine in Botswana, and all I can say is, everything I thought I knew about diamond mines was completely wrong.

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First Nations near proposed Sask. diamond mine cautiously optimistic about future (CBC News Saskatoon – November 18, 2019)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/

Mining giant Rio Tinto announced plans to exercise options in Star-Orion South Project, buy majority stake

Three First Nations in central Saskatchewan say they’ve begun informal talks with a large multinational mining company planning a large diamond mine project in the area.

On Friday, Rio Tinto Exploration Canada (RTEC) gave notice it would be exercising its options to enter into a joint venture agreement with the project’s current owner on the Star Orion South diamond project. If successful, the move would eventually leave Rio Tinto with a majority stake.

The potential change in ownership would be welcome, according to the James Smith Cree Nation. For years, the First Nation has been battling with the mine’s current owner, Star Diamond Corporation (formerly Shore Gold).

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Sunday Strategist: Diamond Merchants’ Headaches Are Forever – by Peter Coy (Bloomberg News – November 17, 2019)

https://www.bloombergquint.com/

(Bloomberg Businessweek) — You know you have a marketing problem when you find yourself arguing that the competitor’s product is “simply too perfect looking.” Or when you fall back on warning people that if they buy the competitor’s product they may not be able to resell it—when reselling it was never their intention anyway.

That’s the diamond business for you. It gets harder every year for diamond merchants to fetch a good price for their product because the competition is insane. First there’s mounting production of natural diamonds. And now synthetic diamonds have gotten so good that for average customers they’re indistinguishable from the kind that come out of the ground.

On top of all that, some customers are turned off by the violence endemic in parts of diamond mining, featured in Leonardo DiCaprio’s film Blood Diamond. What’s a strategist to do? For De Beers, the diamond-mining unit of Anglo American Plc, conflict diamonds may be the smallest of its problem.

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In Kimberley, the world’s diamond capital, illicit mining fight flounders – by Tanisha Heiberg and Helen Reid (Reuters U.S. – November 11, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

KIMBERLEY, South Africa (Reuters) – The first South African project to bring illegal miners into the formal fold has been plagued by violence in diamond capital Kimberley, dealing a major blow to national efforts to stem a booming illicit trade.

The project was launched 18 months ago in Kimberley, the site of a 19th-century diamond rush that lured fortune-seekers from the world over. Mine owners granted more than 800 unlicensed, or informal, small-scale miners the right to legally mine around 1,500 acres of diamond-rich waste fields.

The aim of the government-backed scheme was to curb illegal mining and black-market trade of diamonds, and serve as a blueprint for future attempts elsewhere in the country, not only in the diamond sector, but also potentially manganese, gold and chrome.

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What the new diamond industry will look like (Mining Review Africa – November 5, 2019)

https://www.miningreview.com/

Speaking at the Diamond Conference in Gaborone, Botswana, De Beers Group CEO, Bruce Cleaver, answered a range of questions that are vital to the fast-changing diamond industry.

Here is what he had to say: How has the diamond industry has managed to sustain its success over the years? Why has Botswana managed to generate so much diamond success when many other countries have struggled to maximise the benefits of their diamonds? What will be important in future if we are to maintain success?

The answer, as is so often the case with simple-looking questions, is in fact complex. Success requires a combination of many different things, all of which depend on the efforts of a great many people and organisations.

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The end of the ‘rarest diamonds in the world’ is at hand and jewellers are already feeling nostalgic – by Claire Ballentine (Bloomberg/Financial Post – October 24, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

For 30 years, jeweller John Calleija has been purchasing rare gems from Rio Tinto Group’s Argyle mine in remote Western Australia, home to 90 per cent of the world’s prized pink diamonds.

On a recent rainy afternoon in New York’s Peninsula Hotel, the Australia-based Calleija studied some of the rarest pink and red stones through a magnifying glass as part of Rio Tinto’s annual pink diamonds tender, which held a total of 64 diamonds making up 56.28 carats. The intense quiet in the room was broken only by Calleija’s occasional murmurs of approval at the gems’ cut and clarity.

The stones themselves are always breathtaking, but this year’s tender also had a heightened sense of nostalgia. The Argyle mine is set to close at the end of next year, now that its supply of economically viable jewels has been exhausted.

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Diamonds hold promise for a better future for Africa – WDC president – by Tasneem Bulbulia (MiningWeekly.com – October 25, 2019)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

Diamond-producing countries on the African continent received about $8.1-billion in 2018, or 9.5% of the $85.9-billion worth of revenues generated from the sale of diamond jewellery, and some still may consider that an insufficient share, World Diamond Council (WDC) president Stephane Fischler told delegates attending the Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi, Russia, earlier this week.

He stressed that the economic potential of the diamond resource, whose value increased by about a factor of five as it travelled from the mine to the countertop of the retail jeweller, was indisputable.

“Diamond deposits hold the promise of a better future for all African producing countries, and more specifically for the communities living in the areas where they are located.

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Industrial-scale bloodshed: from diamonds to oil – by Igor Kuchma (Asia Times – October 18, 2019)

https://www.asiatimes.com/

For a very long time the diamond business was considered one of the bloodiest industries in the world. It caused various civil wars in Africa, murdered thousands if not millions of people, and left the Central African Republic in ruins.

In order to stop the massacre or at least try to reduce it, the United Nations started the Kimberley Process (KP) that imposes extensive requirements on its members to enable them to certify shipments of rough diamonds as “conflict-free” and prevent conflict diamonds from entering the legitimate trade.

According to its official website, the KP has 54 participants, representing 81 countries, with the European Union and its member states counting as a single participant.

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AS LAB-GROWN DIAMONDS NEAR MAINSTREAM ACCEPTANCE, THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY IS CHANGING – by Dhani Mau (Fashionista.com – October 17, 2019)

https://fashionista.com/

The lab-grown and mining industries may even be pushing one another to become more transparent and ethical.

Long before streetwear brands like Supreme popularized a business model built on limited-edition drops, the diamond industry used scarcity to drive up the desirability and perceived value of diamonds. There have always been a finite number of these sparkling chunks of carbon in the earth, making them feel all the more special.

However, in the past few years, technology has evolved to the point that those same sparkling hunks of carbon can be grown in labs, where scientists have managed to recreate the environment in which diamonds were formed in the earth.

And the increasing availability of lab-grown diamonds is fueling widespread change across the industry, with a big influx of jewelry brands using them (and often branding them as a more ethical and sustainable alternative) and at-times-aggressive opposition from proponents of mined jewels. Those on both sides of the lab grown vs. mined debate are often impassioned in their points of view.

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How does blockchain root out blood diamonds from the world’s supply market? – by Peter Sabine (South China Morning Post – October 5, 2019)

https://www.scmp.com/

From provenance to payment, blockchain has become an attractive option for major diamond companies like De Beers that want to track origin and other information vital to their credibility with buyers

The diamond industry is getting a boost with a distributed ledger treatment, offering crucial advantages for all supply chain parties. For purchasers of diamonds, transactions can be soured by numerous perils such as origin, quality and fakes.

The concept of using blockchain in the industry is nothing new, but has arguably risen to prominence in response to the issue of blood diamonds, also known as conflict diamonds.

These are a major problem for the market due to highly publicised controversies, including a connection to everything from war to child labour. The gems are mined in war zones and sold to fund a range of activities, be it an insurgency or a warlord’s reign.

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