Antwerp Diamond Conference Wrap Up

Day two opened with a strong speech by South African Minister of Minerals & Energy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on the producers’ perspective. Echoing the speech of President Thabo Mbeki that spoke in the name of the whole African continent, the minister said the issue of beneficiation was essential.

“Diamonds are Africa’s best friend,” said Mbeki the night before, and Minister Mlambo-Ngcuka re-emphasized it throughout her speech, saying Africa needed to polish its goods on its own and set them in locally manufactured jewelry.

When an audience member asked her how she plans to compete with Indian manufacturing, she answered that South Africa has the goods and they will ensure that “they (the Indian industry) need us”.

This answer perhaps underlines one of several problems the industry is facing. Clearly, to ensure consumer confidence the industry does not need to become less efficient.

But the issue is perhaps wider. Not only that the first half of the second day was devoted to producers, where were the retailers? Those companies in the forefront, not to say battleground, of the retail experience were very much missed. Their insights could have been an eye opener to the entire industry that is constantly looking downstream.

Or for that matter, where were the Israelis? The Ramat Gan center is struggling and many are wondering how to proceed. And the New York diamond dealers? True, it’s a greater distance at the height of the season, but if the issue of consumer confidence affects the entire diamond industry, it’s affecting them close to home.

It could be concluded that the HRD, as usual, set a thought provoking and enlightening conference. It did, indeed. But the conference, inadvertently, highlighted the issue of consumer confidence in an unexpected light – that of an industry that is taking its first wobbly steps on the way to learning how to approach, and resolve, its retail issues.