New Sightholders List - June 10
May 23, 05
The Diamond Trading Company (DTC) is planning to tell Sightholders and applicants if they are on the new sightholder list on June 10, the last day of Sight 5. The news will be announced in confidence, giving applicants the choice of when and how to release the news publicly. A new Sightholder Directory will be published in January 2006.
According to DTC’s Sales Director Varda Shine, Sightholders asked to delay the announcement until after the JCK show in Vegas. The new contract will be for two and half years, with an intention to have a three year contract starting in 2008.
Last week DTC Key Account Managers finished the panel – a series of meetings to go over all the applications – and after today’s last submissions of Intention To Offer (ITO) requests, the race to become a Sightholder enters the final stretch .
Shine says that in early June all the data goes into a computerized model. The model weighs the requests against De Beers’ production forecasts, and produces an objective client list that takes into account profile score, goods requests and availability.
“We received dozens of new applications,” she said in a conversation with IDEX Online. “There is stiff competition to receive a Sight,” she added.
Another new feature of the new Sightholders’ contract, as first reported in IDEX Online, is the option to receive an additional Sight in producing countries. The idea is that they will receive a Sight based on their profile, up to a cap of $2 million, if they can demonstrate actual investment in local manufacturing and existing skills and capabilities as of December 31st 2004.
This could possibly mean that the Sight pie will be sliced into thinner slices, depending of course on how many Sightholders there will be on the new list.
Shine says that they are still considering whether to raise prices at Sight 5, but for now it is clear that it will be a small Sight.