Amazing development. This report is wrong in one respect however. That is in regard to Anglo's De Beers unit. Anglo has recently been in negotiations with a famous Luxury House in conjunction with a Sovereign Wealth Fund for the sale of De Beers. Anglo has let it be known in the investment banking World that it is open to offers.

At the offered price proposed by BHP De Beers is included in the transaction. BHP has said it will consider divesting from De Beers after the close of the deal. In any case it looks like De Beers will soon be a stand alone business without the safety net of a huge and diversified mining company behind it. This certainly has to increase the risks of price stability, and production of Diamonds going forward. I don't think the impact of Lab Grown Diamonds on the industry can be overstated at this time.

Lab Growing technology is advancing quickly. The lab I partner in has grown Diamonds that the major labs issue reports as natural. I have some of them in my possession and have personally tested them on a number of the Lab Grown Diamond detectors on the market. I think this ability is already more well developed in other more sophisticated labs. We will never sell these stones for obvious reasons. So, we are not aggressively growing these, and have only grown a few experimentally. Since we won't sell them they are not profitable for us at this time. However, I am not sure about others.

So, this begs the question. If you can't tell the difference in a lab, are mined Diamonds worth more than lab grown? Is block chain technology a good enough provenance for the market to value stone differently. Interesting times ahead.

This wanders from Barbara's original post, but we recently had a vendor selling yellow HTHP type 1 cut stones - our diamond screener would miss it since not a 2a... Not sure if our GG would catch it with the UV-visual clues or not...

Do you mean HPHT Treated (color)? or HPHT Lab Grown?

There is nothing currently in the literature about LG type1....just some unsubstantiated innuendo.

25, 30 years ago the only large LGD were HTHP, used as heat sinks in special electronics. They had a situation, which didn’t matter for their purposes, but mattered for our world. They couldn’t keep atmospheric nitrogen from contaminating the process, creating yellow to orange crystals. Five or ten years later they found that aluminum would scavenge the nitrogen and give a pure product - I believe the Russians figured that out. Don’t know if the same technic is used today.

Nitrogen? Type 1

No nitrogen? Type 2

Reference?

https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/summer-2020-naturally-colored-yellow-orange-diamonds

Section under "Identification Concerns" in the above article.

https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/fall-2017-observations-hpht-grown-synthetic-diamonds



If you really like nerdy stuff, this paper has some great current information on HTHP and CVD diamond synthesis.
I'd always heard of Fe, NI, CO, etc. as the catalyst/flux for growing HTHP diamonds, but section 3.2 has interesting stuff on newer catalyst systems. Cool!!!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264127523009930

Not in the literature because to say so out loud is so politically explosive, and potentially damaging to the entire gemstone and jewelry industry. But they unquestionably do exist, in high colors, clarities, and large sizes. I believe they exist in two forms HPHT & CVD diamonds with nitrogen, and CVD Type IIa that pass the secondary screenings for the Natural call.

Here is a dilemma for the industry to work out. Say you are a large Diamond Company who participates in both the Lab Grown and Earth Mined finished diamond business. You are financially sound and have deep enough pockets for R&D. In your experiments you have successfully made Lab Grown Diamonds that when submitted for origin reports to the World's most prestigious labs come back with reports saying Natural Origin. What do you do with that?

If you sell them as natural with no disclosure about their true origin you are commiting a fraud.

If you sell them with the report but do disclose that they are in fact Lab Grown you cause two problems. First you set up the conditions for others to commit a fraud. You also create a situation where if this becomes common knowledge, and a common type product in the market, you jeopardize the reputation of the Lab who issued the report, and create a lack of trust in the whole industry. How do you justify the high price of a Mined Diamond that is indistinguishable form a Lab Grown on that sells at 1.5% of the price?

I believe most ethically run companies have taken the decision not to sell these stones at all. They just leave them in the safe. Since they will never sell them they have no value to the firm and are not purposely grown in commercial volumes.

If you do tell the Labs that they are identifying your Lab Grown as Natural what happens? I have had discussions where firms are concerned that the labs will stop accepting stones from a company with this technology. Doing so would have a damaging effect on their natural stone business. Why take that chance?

The question remains however about what course less ethically focused companies are doing. I don't know of this happening, but have reservations about it. Who would brag about commiting fraud?

Finally, maybe the labs are aware, and do have samples. Maybe they are working on technologies to make the needed separations. If so, I am on their side on this. One day they may ask that stones that were graded prior to the new technology be sent in for a re-evaluation before a sale. If so and you have sold such stones your fraud will be exposed opening up huge liability issues. Another reason not to manufactor or trade is such stones. Too risky.

Interesting time in the Diamond industry...

Like I said in my earlier post the De Beers Diamond business is already in play to be sold by Anglo, it just wasn't public knowledge yet. Today we got confirmation of this from Bloomberg.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... ckout=true