Natural, Lab . . . and Sky?
April 18, 24
When is a lab grown diamond not a lab grown diamond?
That's one of the more intriguing questions at the center of the latest row about what terms should be used to describe any diamond that wasn't produced underground.
Skydiamond, a UK diamond manufacturer, was ordered to stop using misleading terms in its advertising by an industry watchdog last week.
But the issue here is more nuanced than the familiar conflict between the natural and lab grown diamond lobbies.
That's because Skydiamond insists "lab grown" is not an accurate description of how it creates diamonds.
It positions its product as "the world's first and only diamond made entirely from the sky" - something distinct and different from either category.
It says its diamonds are made using four natural ingredients, the sun, the wind, rain and atmospheric carbon in a patented process.
And it claims the process has virtually nothing in common with normal lab grown production methods.
Only one out of the 23 steps described in its patent - namely CVD or chemical vapor deposition - is also used in the conventional lab-grown diamond production processes, it says.
As a result, Skydiamond insists the qualifiers "laboratory-grown" or "laboratory-created" would not only be inaccurate. They would be potentially misleading.
This throws a spanner into the works. Do we accept this "third way" argument - the claim that these clearly aren't natural diamonds, but nor are they lab growns.
That they're a unique category of diamonds like no other. Or should we dismiss it as clever marketing?
Yes, the company may have patented 22 steps in its production process - extracting carbon dioxide from the air, splitting rainwater into hydrogen and oxygen, and growing diamonds in "mills" (not labs) using renewable energy.
But at the end of the day it does also employ a form of CVD, in common with most lab grown manufacturers. So the claim that its diamonds are not lab grown is, at the very least, open to debate.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), responding to a complaint by the Natural Diamond Council, ruled against Skydiamond.
"Because the ads did not make clear that Skydiamond diamonds were synthetic we concluded that the claims "diamonds", "diamonds made entirely from the sky" and "Skydiamond" were misleading," it said.
It noted that Skydiamond went to great lengths to distinguish itself from the mined diamond industry and also, to some extent, from lab-grown diamond manufacturers.
The bottom line is that it ordered the company not to misleadingly use the terms "diamonds", "diamonds made entirely from the sky" and "Skydiamond" to describe their synthetic diamonds in isolation without a clear and prominent qualifier, such as "synthetic", "laboratory-grown" or "laboratory-created", or another way of clearly and prominently conveying the same meaning to consumers. They must also avoid using the term "real diamonds".
Skydiamond may object to "laboratory-grown" or "laboratory-created", as suggested by the ASA, but "synthetic" covers any non-natural diamond, regardless of how it is made.
Skydiamond didn't want to discuss the ruling in detail, but did provide a strongly-worded statement in its defense.
"The ASA have made a mistake and we are appealing this ruling," it said. "Our website and all of our marketing, indeed our very name, make clear that our diamonds come from the sky, we make them or mine them from the sky. We make that very clear.
"Nobody could possibly think they are conventional stones ripped from the bowels of the earth at enormous environmental cost - and nobody actually has.
"This complaint is not based on actual confusion on the part of the customer, it comes from the trade body for diamond mining companies - it is an attempt to use the ASA for anti competitive purposes and it is utterly baseless."
This debate is not over. Watch this space.
Have a fabulous weekend.