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Diamonds – Mining, Lab-Grown and Conflict/Blood

Swedish royal jewels stolen by thieves who fled by speedboat – by Euan McKirdy, Joshua Berlinger and Rory Smith (CNN.com – August 1, 2018)

https://www.cnn.com/

(CNN)Thieves stole priceless royal artifacts in a daring raid on a Swedish cathedral before escaping by speedboat, police said. The thieves made off with jewels belonging to former Swedish monarchs Karl IX and Kristina from the Strängnäs Cathedral to the west of the capital, Stockholm, on Tuesday.

Two crowns and a golden orb adorned with a crucifix were taken from the cathedral, which dates back to the 12th century, according to a police report. The items date from the early 17th century.

A witness told Swedish media that he was eating lunch when he saw two people running toward a boat, which they sped away in.

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Heart in Diamond: The Company Reshaping the Funeral Industry – by Naomi Webb (TG Daily – July 30, 2018)

https://www.tgdaily.com/

In recent years, man made diamonds have completely revolutionised the diamond industry. Unlike blood diamonds and conflict diamonds, man made diamonds are ethical and eco-friendly. They are also relatively easy and comparatively affordable to produce.

Heart in Diamond have taken the man-made diamond concept further to incredible success; creating diamonds from the ashes of both people and pets, creating unique memorials that people simply can’t get enough of.

As you will see here, memorial diamonds are just as beautiful as naturally formed diamonds, but with a wonderful and poignant meaning to them. You can choose to have these diamonds created from hair, ashes, or a combination of the two, and keep a piece of your loved one by your side always.

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Tiffany & Co. Has Built a Secret Lab to Crush Its Rivals – by Kim Bhasin (Bloomberg News – July 18, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

At Tiffany & Co.’s new workshop in Manhattan, jewelers sit at wooden desks peering through magnifying glasses as they polish silver rings and twist bits of gold. They’re making prototypes of future products, one-of-a-kind experimental items that may never end up in a glass case.

Their marching orders come straight from Tiffany Chief Executive Officer Alessandro Bogliolo: Rev up the pace of new ideas. Under Bogliolo, the 181-year-old company has been trying to attract a younger clientele with revamped jewelry lines and punchier marketing.

Early results are positive. A rebound, which began just before he took over last year, is gaining momentum. Last quarter, Tiffany’s revenue growth was its highest since 2012.

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De Beers Canada acquires Peregrine Diamonds, to take over Nunavut diamond project (CBC News North – July 19, 2018)

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

De Beers Canada says it plans to take over the company behind the Chidliak diamond mining project in Nunavut. In a Thursday morning news release, the corporation announced it has entered into an approximately $107 million agreement to acquire all outstanding securities of Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. at $0.24 per share.

Peregrine owns and operates the Chidliak diamond exploration project, located 120 kilometres northeast of Iqaluit on Baffin Island.

De Beers Canada, which is headquartered in Calgary, previously declined to invest in the project in 2013 after signing an option agreement with Peregrine the previous year. If it had agreed to the joint venture, it would have invested almost $60 million in Chidliak over five years, operating and having majority interest in the project.

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De Beers Makes Rare Acquisition by Buying Canadian Diamond Mine – by Thomas Biesheuvel (Bloomberg News – July 19, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

De Beers has made a rare acquisition, buying a Canadian company, as the world’s biggest diamond producer seeks to replace closing mines in the country.

The unit of Anglo American Plc agreed to buy Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. for about $81 million, giving it control of the Chidliak diamond resource in northern Canada, the company said in a statement Thursday. De Beers rarely buys assets, partly because it owns some of the best gem mines in the world.

The company has been seeking to increase its exposure to Canada to lessen its dependence on its traditional southern African assets.

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Millennials like their diamonds ethically sourced or man-made, and jewellers are responding – by Divia Harilela (South China Morning Post – July 7, 2018)

https://www.scmp.com/

According to industry insiders, he is not the only one among his peers who is concerned about where diamonds are sourced from. While many have lamented that diamonds have lost their lustre for the new generation, the truth is that millennials view these precious stones differently from their predecessors.

In addition to colour and clarity, they are more likely to consider social and ethical concerns before they make a diamond purchase.

“New generations equally value what we call natural diamonds, but they are even more demanding about what they buy in this category, like in most of their consumption. Consumers, now more than ever, want to be assured of quality and integrity,” says François Delage, CEO of De Beers Diamond Jewellers.

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[Diamonds] Africa’s Blue Economy: An overlooked opportunity? – by David Thomas (African Business – July 16, 2018)

African Business

Honing in on a promising area using geophysical mapping, a crawler cuts and dredges the seabed, sucking some 60 tonnes of sediment per hour through a giant pipe and onto the vessel. Without any human contact, the sediment is washed and sorted for the glittering stones, which are sealed into small, barcoded containers for the first stage of their journey to the boutiques of Europe and Asia.

To many, subsea diamond mining may sound like a far-off vision of the future, a fanciful innovation on a par with asteroid mining. But with 1m carats recovered from the seabed in 2015 alone by global mining giant De Beers, the technology is already well into its infancy.

For the firm, which has made a vast fortune sifting the soils of Southern Africa for 130 years, heading to the oceans is not just a technological luxury but also an economic necessity.

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A Diamond Giant Plays Up Its Russian Ties to Appeal to Americans – by Andrew E. Kramer (New York Times – July 11, 2018)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Alrosa is not a household name, but it is a dominant force in mining and wants to increase its sales in the United States.

MIRNY, Russia — Shoppers want to know where their coffee is grown, where their clothes are made and where their iPhones are assembled. The world’s biggest diamond miner is now betting that they will also care where the jewels on their engagement rings are dug up.

Alrosa, the mining company, is mounting a campaign to tell the tale of its stones’ journeys from mines deep beneath the ground on to the fingers of betrothed couples around the world. Its one barrier? The diamonds come from Russia.

The company is not a household name. In fact, most people who buy a diamond ring at a jewelry store have probably never heard of it.

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First there were blood diamonds. In India, there are suicide diamonds (South China Morning Post – July 10, 2018)

https://www.scmp.com/

Investigations spread over a year in the western Indian state of Gujarat found a pattern of suicides – many shrouded in silence – in the industry that cuts and polishes 90 per cent of gems sold globally, with many workers paid per stone

After polishing diamonds destined for luxury stores from New York to Hong Kong for nearly 10 hours in a cramped workshop in western India, Vikram Raujibhai went home, waited for his family to leave, and locked the front door. Raujibhai doused himself in kerosene and lit a match.

His family returned to find the 29-year-old’s charred body, his case the latest in a series among workers with low wages and poor work conditions in India’s booming diamond industry, as uncovered by a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation.

Investigations spread over a year in the western Indian state of Gujarat found a pattern of suicides – many shrouded in silence – in the industry that cuts and polishes 90 per cent of gems sold globally, with many workers paid per stone.

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Cree see benefits from Quebec’s first diamond mine, built on their territory – by Kevin Dougherty (CBC News Canada – July 8, 2018)

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

Cree leaders negotiated to have guaranteed jobs, contracts and a share of the royalties from the Renard mine

Quebec’s first diamond mine — the $774-million, Stornoway Diamond Corp.’s Renard mine — sits on Cree territory, about 800 kilometres from Montreal in northern Quebec.

In operation since January 2017, the mine would not have happened without a unique agreement reached between the company and the Cree, who are guaranteed jobs, contracts and a share of the royalties, once the mine is profitable.

For more than a year now, the mine has been producing diamonds, some of which are sold at Montreal’s Birks jewellery store. They bear a fleur-de-lis inscribed by a laser, and come with a certificate that says they’re officially, “Diamants du Québec.”

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SA missing a gem of an opportunity for creating jobs, wealth – by Allan Seccombe (Business Day – June 25, 2018)

https://www.businesslive.co.za/

A short drive from the edge of the gold belt west of Johannesburg lies one of the world’s biggest alluvial diamond deposits, stretching deep into the Atlantic Ocean. But onerous, costly regulations, corruption and nit-picking officials are destroying a once-vibrant junior mining sector, say a diminishing number of diggers.

Digger after digger talks of how difficult it has become to operate small mines that dig into ancient riverbeds more than 100-million years old, and an even older seafloor.

These deposits should lend themselves to small-scale mining, wealth creation and employment across hundreds of kilometres stretching through farmlands, impoverished towns and settlements where unemployment is rife and work opportunities outside agriculture are slim. But that isn’t the case.

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Eira Thomas takes the reins at Lucara – by Alisha Hiyate (Northern Miner – June 19, 2018)

http://www.northernminer.com/

Lightning has struck more than once so far in Eira Thomas’s career of more than 25 years. The geologist famously spotted a nearly 2-carat diamond in drill core — an incredibly rare occurrence — during exploration at Lac de Gras in 1994, at what would become the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories.

And as a founder and director of Lucara Diamond (TSX: LUC), she was part of the leadership when the company unearthed a 1,109-carat stone — the second largest diamond in history — at its Karowe mine in Botswana in November 2015.

“I’ve been very fortunate,” said Thomas in an interview in May. “Those were obviously two exciting milestones for me in my career, but I think with each and every project that I’ve worked on there’ve been those moments.”

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De Beers playing poker with perception by launching Lightbox? – by David McKay (MiningMx.com – June 19, 2018)

https://www.miningmx.com/

ANGLO American’s 85%-owned De Beers may have pulled off a strategic coup by unveiling plans to launch a new brand of synthetic diamonds. These are the stones that are ‘grown’ artificially in a laboratory and against which the diamond giant has previously fought a marketing campaign.

In fact, the group spent some $140m in 2017 alone promoting naturally occurring diamonds which it says truly represent the profound emotions that inspire wedding bands and other anniversary gifts. Now, however, De Beers has performed an about-turn by unveiling its Lightbox range of synthetics. What could it portend?

According to analysts, this is not really the acknowledgement of diamond synthetics that it appears (although De Beers has its own line of synthetic diamonds which are used primarily for industrial purposes). Instead, it’s a clever commercial ploy aimed at better controlling the pricing and proliferation of lab-grown diamonds by other producers.

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Why Indian traders are outraging over the sale of synthetic diamonds – by MG Arun (Daily O – June 18, 2018)

https://www.dailyo.in/

The market for real diamonds may feel the impact.

For an industry that is still reeling under the Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksy scams, there is fresh trouble brewing. This time, it is the announcement by London-headquartered De Beers, the world’s largest diamond company with mines in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada, that it is launching a jewellery brand using synthetic diamonds in India.

A synthetic diamond (also known as an artificial diamond, cultured diamond, or cultivated diamond) is produced using an artificial process, as opposed to natural diamonds, which are created using geological processes.

A section of traders in Surat and Mumbai, two main hubs for diamond trade in India, are up in arms against the launch of synthetic diamonds in India, since they believe that such diamonds will destroy the market for real diamonds here.

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Diamonds in Canada Editorial: The next diamond boom – by Alisha Hiyate (Northern Miner -June 18, 2018)

http://www.northernminer.com/

We’ve timed the release of our June issue to coincide with Diamonds in Canada’s first-ever event. The inaugural Diamonds in Canada Symposium, hosted by The Northern Miner, will take place on June 11 at the Royal York in Toronto.

The event will look at the diamond market and industry trends, and involve some of the biggest players in the sector — including Grenville and Eira Thomas.

Each had a central role in the founding and building of Canada’s diamond sector: Gren Thomas was the founder of Aber Diamond (now Dominion Diamond) and is still deeply involved in diamond exploration through North Arrow Minerals. His daughter Eira Thomas was part of the exploration team at Aber that found the Diavik mine, as well as a founder of Stornoway Diamond and Lucara Diamond.

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