Holiday jewelry sales in the U.S. increased 5.9% in 2017, according to a Mastercard-SpendingPulse survey, and outpaced spending in general, which increased 4.9%. The survey found that jewelry buying was running behind other retail categories until the week before Christmas when sales surged. Mastercard’s survey results are typically a bit higher than others.
A Centurion survey of primarily upscale jewelry retailers found that nearly 60% reported sales increases (one-third of those over 10%), but many noted that the gains came despite decreased customer traffic – fewer buyers were spending more money.
Signet Plc, the largest jewelry chain, turned in a disappointing season, however. Declining traffic at shopping malls and problems with its credit program resulted in a sub-par season: a 5.3% decline in its same store U.S. sales and an 8% decline overall.
Some of the world’s leading jewellery companies are failing to ensure that their gold and diamonds are mined ethically, according to Human Rights Watch, despite two decades of efforts to clean up the industry.
While the world has made progress limiting the flow of diamonds linked to conflict, so-called blood diamonds, leading brands such as Boodles, Rolex, Cartier and Bulgari are failing to do enough to show that all their gems are not linked to broader human rights abuses, the New York-based group said.
“An increasing number of customers want to be sure the jewellery they buy has not fuelled human rights abuses,” Juliane Kippenberg, associate child rights director at Human Rights Watch, said.
ANGLO American turned in a robust fourth quarter production performance which took full year production on a copper equivalent basis some 5% higher compared to 2016, largely owing to good numbers at Kumba Iron Ore and De Beers, its 85% subsidiary.
Mark Cutifani, CEO of Anglo American, said the year-on-year improvement was despite cutting platinum and metallurgical coal output. “The ramp up of Gahcho Kué and Grosvenor mines made positive contributions to our production profile in 2017, and a strong performance from Sishen resulted in an 8% increase in production from Kumba Iron Ore,” he said in a statement.
Gahcho Kué is the De Beers’ newly commissioned diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories. It reached nameplate production in the second quarter of the financial year.
Zimbabwe’s new government may soon scrap a 51% requirement of local ownership for foreign investors in the diamond and platinum sectors, in an effort to re-engage international lenders, curb spending and attract investors to revive the country’s battered economy.
The so-called indigenization laws intended to increase black Zimbabweans’ share of the economy, but were opaque and open to abuse.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took the post in November after Robert Mugabe quit under pressure from the military, had already said he would revoke such rule on all other minerals, except from diamonds and platinum.
Global Trends in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM): A review of key numbers and issues was prepared by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) for the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (IGF).
ASM has experienced explosive growth in recent years due to the rising value of mineral prices and the increasing difficulty of earning a living from agriculture and other rural activities. An estimated 40.5 million people were directly engaged in ASM in 2017, up from 30 million in 2014, 13 million in 1999 and 6 million in 1993. That compares with only 7 million people working in industrial mining in 2014.
ASM is generally pursued as a route out of poverty or as an activity to complement insufficient income, especially in communities where alternative employment is hard to come by. ASM is also a very diverse sector. Its main challenges vary from region to region—and often from site to site.
Zimbabwe, which has the world’s second-biggest platinum reserves, may lift a requirement that companies mining the metal or diamonds must be at least 51 percent owned by black citizens of the country, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said.
Mnangagwa, who became president in November after Robert Mugabe resigned under pressure from the military, has announced that the ownership requirement on all other minerals will be abolished. The government needs to assess its platinum and diamond industries more carefully, he said.
“I only excluded diamonds and platinum for now. We do not have a real or deep-rooted or well-interrogated policy on diamonds or platinum,” the 75-year-old president said in an interview in his office in the capital, Harare, last week. “Down the line when we are satisfied that this can also go into the open basket we will do so.”
The global agreement to prevent trade in “blood diamonds” from Africa has failed to assure consumers their gems are not tainted by human rights abuses and conflict, according to one of its founding members.
IMPACT, a Canadian non-government organisation, has left the Kimberley Process because it says it has given buyers “false confidence” about where their stones come from and needs to reform.
The departure of IMPACT, nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for its work on conflict diamonds, leaves only one international NGO left in the Kimberley Process, established in 2003 to prevent diamonds being used to fund rebel groups in Africa.
Diamonds are set to slump further, according to a hedge fund whose bet on marijuana made it the world’s best performer in 2016.
Prices of the precious gem may slump as much as 10 percent this year as it loses appeal with younger consumers and faces challenges from synthetic alternatives, said Singapore-based Ben Cleary, who co-manages the $500 million Tribeca Global Natural Resources Fund.
“Diamonds are marketed on the idea that they will forever represent a pinnacle of luxury and materialist desire,” Cleary wrote in an email. “Our concern is whether a younger generation of millennials will have the same allegiance to the same products as their parents and grandparents.”
One of the biggest diamonds in history has been discovered in the mountainous kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa.
Gem Diamonds Ltd. found the 910-carat stone, about the size of two golf balls, at its Letseng mine in the country. It’s a D color Type IIa diamond, which means it has very few or no nitrogen atoms and is one of the most expensive stones. The diamond is the fifth-biggest ever found.
The Letseng mine is famous for the size and quality of the diamonds it produces and has the highest average selling price in the world. Gem sold a 357-carat stone for $19.3 million in 2015 and in 2006 found the 603-carat Lesotho Promise.
The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame was conceived by the late Maurice R. Brown, former editor and publisher of The Northern Miner, as a way to recognize and honour the legendary mine finders and builders of a great Canadian industry. The Hall was established in 1988. For more information about the extraordinary individuals who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, please go to their home website:http://mininghalloffame.ca/
Robert (Bob) Gannicott was a pioneer of Arctic mineral exploration and a visionary entrepreneur who helped unlock the downstream value of Canada’s fledgling diamond industry. He played a pivotal role in the discovery and development of the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories (NWT) for Aber Diamond Corporation in the 1990s, and led Aber’s later acquisition of luxury jeweller Harry Winston to help promote the exceptional quality of Canadian gem diamonds.
With Gannicott as Chairman and CEO, Aber evolved into Harry Winston Diamond Corporation in 2007, and became Dominion Diamond Corporation in 2013. In a bold move in 2013, Gannicott sold the retail division of Harry Winston to acquire an 80% interest in the Ekati mine, which combined with 40% of Diavik transformed Dominion into Canada’s largest independent diamond producer.
http://www.pendaproductions.com/ This video was produced by PENDA Productions, a full service production company specializing in Corporate Communications with a focus on Corporate Responsibility.
It was the first time a Canadian company owned a majority share of a Canadian diamond mine, along with value-added sorting and marketing operations in Canada, Belgium and India. Born and raised in England, Gannicott immigrated to Canada in 1967, and found his first job at a gold mine in Yellowknife. His career compass continued to point north after he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Ottawa in 1975.
Diamonds might be forever. Diamonds may also be a girl’s best friend. But one thing’s for sure—figuring out the value of a diamond isn’t easy. The stones that come out of the ground bear little resemblance to the diamonds that sparkle on rings or pendants.
A diamond will travel across the globe for cutting and polishing—to places as far flung as Belgium and Botswana then India and back—and before it winds up on your finger, it will be sold multiple times, at prices that vary according to market demand at each stage.
Since the private sector economy of the Northwest Territories hinges on the export of rough diamonds, we figured we’d try to bring some clarity to this complex and opaque industry.
The European Union has taken over the chairmanship of the Kimberley Process for 2018, a decade after it last directed the initiative. Federica Mogherini, who is an Italian politician and the High Representative of the bloc for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, will be heading the operation.
Kimberley is a process started in 2003 following the United Nations General Assembly’s Resolution 55/56.
It is aimed at removing conflict diamonds from the global supply chain, which means that participants have to go through a certification scheme that ensures that their diamond purchases are not financing violence by rebel movements aiming at undermining legitimate governments.
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The global diamond industry is either growing in affluent regions or remaining steady in less affluent ones, thereby reflecting a degree of positivity, as well as signs of growth.
This also points to untapped potential that is ready to be unlocked through increased investment upstream and downstream, says diamond industry integrity organisation World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) president Ernie Blom.
Driven by demand from the international market for luxurious large-stone diamond jewellery, a significant degree of this untapped market potential to beneficiate (cut and polish) diamonds has been unlocked by a rapidly expanding and thriving trading environment in Dubai with the launch of a high-tech, diamond- polishing factory.
Kimberlite pipe at site now estimated to be 540 metres deep, was previously estimated at 260 metres
A diamond mining project in Nunavut may have just gotten a whole lot bigger, as Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. says a kimberlite deposit at its Chidliak site is twice as deep as it previously estimated.
Peregrine has been exploring the Chidliak site, which sits 120 kilometres northeast of Iqaluit, since 2005. In a release issued Tuesday, the junior mining company announced that one of their most promising kimberlite pipes — named CH 6 — extends a total of 540 metres below the ground, 280 metres deeper than initially announced.
“We’ve got the potential to double the number of diamonds contained,” said Tom Peregoodoff, the president of Peregrine Diamonds. “If they can be extracted economically, we potentially have added significantly to both the mine life and eventual economic outcome of the project.”
Martin Rapaport is never short of words when it comes to diamonds. Coleby Nicholson met with the industry nonconformist to discuss the current state of the international diamond market.
Martin Rapaport: most people in the industry will know the name, or at least recognise the face and signature bow tie.
The founder and chairman of Rapaport Group, which publishes Rapaport magazine and operates online trading platform RapNet among other products and services, began his career in the diamond industry in 1975 as an apprentice diamond cleaver in Antwerp.
His Wikipedia page notes that he has been called a ‘maverick’ within the diamond industry and probably rightly so. I met with Rapaport in July to discuss the state of the industry and his often counter-intuitive and controversial stances on various industry issues.
