During these days of pandemic and social distancing, a lighter but a more uplifting story is sorely needed, and especially one that is sweet, or to be more precise sweet smelling.
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During these days of pandemic and social distancing, a lighter but a more uplifting story is sorely needed, and especially one that is sweet, or to be more precise sweet smelling.
It may seem early to some, but the time has arrived to beginning thinking about the world after the COVID coronavirus virus. Whether that is a matter of months or more than a year away, most analysts agree that the effects will be substantial, and often in ways that are unexpected. The diamond business will not be excluded.
With a growing chorus in the diamond industry calling for an independent and non-partisan online diamond-trading platform, the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) has announced that it has decided to create a system of its own.
As the COVID-19 coronavirus spreads further in countries around the world, the ripple effect of the pandemic continues to upend the business sector, with the diamond industry being no exception. A case in point is that, for the first time in 42 years, the Rapaport Group has announced it was suspending publication of its weekly price list for more than one month, until May 1.
Diamond deposits extracted from an exploration project on Baffin Island, which is part of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, and is the country’s largest water-bound landmass and the fifth-largest island in the world, has led geologists to a startling conclusion.
With international air travel reduced to a bare minimum as a result of the COVID-19 coronavirus, and an increasing number of countries allowing entry only to citizens and other legal residents, rough diamond mining companies are being forced to consider new alternative operating procedures in a sector where typically buyers have traveled in to examine good visually before purchasing them.
As the Israeli government ramps up restrictions on the public and the business sector, as part of its efforts to mitigate the spread of the CODID-19 coronavirus, the country’s diamond industry is scrambling to adjust to the new situation.
Alrosa, state-controlled Russian diamond mining company that is the world’s largest producer of rough diamond, has reported that revenues in 2019 fell 21 percent drop in rubles to RUB 238 billion ($3.32 billion). The company cited “weaker demand in the rough and polished diamonds market.”
The COVID-19 coronavirus continues to make it presence felt on the diamond and jewelry markets, with De Beers citing the worldwide epidemic as a primary reason for its cutting the size of rough diamond allocation in February, which was 36 percent down on the amount reported just one month earlier.
Diamonds, as we are discovering, are valued for much more than their physical beauty. Their physical properties are highly sought out by industry, medicine, industry, quantum computing technologies and biological sensing. No wonder then that they are gaining ever increasing attention in the scientific community.
To possibly understand what long-term impact the current coronavirus could have on the diamond business, it may be useful to consider a lesson from past industry history. It dates back to the months leading up and after the First Gulf War in 1991.
According to Kimberley Process (KP) rules, there is only current source of goods in the market that can be qualified as conflict diamonds, and those are rough goods being mined by artisanal miners in the Central African Republic (CAR).
De Beers reported its earnings for 2019, which are at the lowest ebb since a majority shareholding in the company was purchased by the miner Anglo American Corporation bought it in 2012.
The coronoavirus, which has dominated the world’s attention in the little more than three weeks since news about it first broke, is becoming as much an economic story as it is a health crisis. Indeed, while scientists are still unsure about whether it will eventually be qualified as a pandemic, it is already apparent that it is impacting on markets and economies on a global scale.
The past decade was a good one for those who invested in fancy colored diamonds. According to Fancy Color Research Foundation (FCRF), which last week published an analysis of the Fancy Color Diamond Index (FCDI) in 2019 and over the last decade. During the years 2010 to 2019 the general index showed a steady market price increase of 77 percent.
Coming off a strong holiday season, Americans are expected to set another record for Valentine’s Day spending this year, according to an annual survey released by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics.
Some three years ago, in its 2017 Insight Report, De Beers identified self-empowered, self-purchasing women as among the diamond industry’s most promising sources of future growth.
On February 3, 2020, the shareholders of Tiffany & Co. made official what had already been announced on November 24 last year, as they voted in favor of a takeover by the luxury giant LVMH Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton for $16.2 billion, or $135 per share in cash. And so, America’s most iconic diamond jewelry brand came under the umbrella of a group that already owns names like Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Celine and Bulgari.
The coranavirus, the epidemic which at time of writing is largely contained to China but has already traveled to a number countries on all five continents, is rattling the luxury product markets. Comparable to the SARS epidemic that first struck in the same part of the world in 2003 and 2004, its global economic effects are likely to be larger because China’s share of the global economy is considerably bigger today, and also because economies are much more interlinked than they were 17 years ago.
Within the most exclusive echelons of diamond jewelry collectors the name De Grisogono was something of an enigma. A Geneva-based jewelry house, it had been founded in 1993 by former Bulgari executive, Fawaz Gruosi, an Italian of Lebanese origin. At the time he promised customers an offering of exclusive works of art and black-diamond jewelry. The company’s name, which is rooted in both the Latin word “Chrysogonus” and the and Greek word “Chrysogonos,” means “begotten of gold”.
The second largest rough diamond ever discovered, the Sewelo, has been acquired by Louis Vuitton, the French fashion house and luxury retail company owned by the world’s largest luxury product brand, LVMH.
The second largest rough diamond ever discovered, the Sewelo, has been acquired by Louis Vuitton, the French fashion house and luxury retail company owned by the world’s largest luxury product brand, LVMH.
The second largest rough diamond ever discovered, the Sewelo, has been acquired by Louis Vuitton, the French fashion house and luxury retail company owned by the world’s largest luxury product brand, LVMH.
A lawsuit just filed in a federal courtroom in the Southern District of New York has underscored how different the laboratory-grown diamond business is from the natural diamond industry.
As it does it each year, through the end of January and the first two weeks of February the Arizona desert will attract gemstone and jewelry buyers from around the world.