Organized by the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), the third international Mines to Market diamond conference offered lively discussions and an opportunity to learn from one another. Below are some of the highlights. IDEX Online will upload speeches and presentations as they become available.

 

Market Overview

Moderator and industry analyst Chaim Even-Zohar told the audience that the industry is still some 15-20 percent behind 2007s activity levels, predicting that rough diamond prices will soften from their current highs. Some 110 million carats are processed in India annually, about 14 of every 15 diamonds in the world.

 

Global retail demand is expected to rise a modest 0.4 percent from 2009, remaining 9.3 percent below 2008 and 17.4 percent below 2007.

 

De Beers

Keynote speaker Gareth Penny predicted stable rough diamond production until 2020, afterwards declining for the next 20 years. He also offered some guidelines for continued growth in the future.

 

DTC CEO Varda Shine outlined distribution and marketing plans by De Beers, including the launch of Forevermark in India later this year.

 

More about it here. 

 

Producers Session

Jacob Thamage, Coordinator of Botswana's Diamond Hub, discussed the country's mineral policy and its objectives and Botswana's value addition aspirations.

 

Alrosa's Analytical Department Head Leonid Tolpezhnikov described the effect of the global slowdown on the company, joined the prediction that demand will exceed supply, while consumer demand for diamond jewelry by 2018 may reach $90 billion.

 

Business Standards & Ethics

Jewelers Vigilance Committee CEO and World Diamond Council's General Council Cecilia Gardner outlined current legal requirements and limitations on trade by the U.S. government. The hot question pertained to trade with Zimbabwe.

 

According to Gardner, international transactions in U.S. dollars are routed through U.S. banks, which are required to hold funds sent to or from companies on the OFAC sanctions list. The miners and marketers of the Marange diamond fields are on the list. The conclusion, to which she refused to comment, was that money transfers of non-U.S. dollars via Indian banks would likely not be stopped.

 

Sharp criticism by attendees from Zimbabwe of U.S. policies were unjustly directed at Gardner, who reminded the audience that "she is just the messenger, don't shoot me."

 

Rough sourcing

Pravinshankar Pandya, chairman of Diamond India Ltd. (DIL), a rough diamond sourcing venture, explained how his organization was also ready to move into the area of infrastructure development for the diamond industry.

 

DIL has recently been granted a license to source primary gold for the jewellery manufacturing industry, Pandya told attendees to the international conference.

 

Ashit Mehta, founder director of the Surat Rough Diamond Sourcing India Ltd. (SRDSIL), appraised the Mines to Market conference of details of how the new venture would function.

 

SRDSIL is a new cooperative venture by Surat-based diamond manufacturers to use the collective strength of smaller players to obtain direct supplies of rough diamonds.

 

Labs

Tom Moses, senior vice president of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), briefed the conference on the threat of small synthetics that were being seen with increasing frequency in various markets.

 

Marc Brauner, co-CEO of the International Gemological Institute (IGI) worldwide, noted that units in China were able to produce fancy yellow diamonds as small as 0.01 carat in substantial quantities.

 

Brauner went on to say that the mines to market process of diamonds was still much of a mystery to most consumers and that the industry needed to step up efforts to communicate clearly to them as a form of assurance. The best method for this, he noted, was to develop a well-trained retail sales force that was able to transmit this assurance.

 

Retail

The retail session of the conference saw Mehul Choksi, chairman and managing director of the Gitanjali Group, explain how the Indian consumer was “graduating” from buying jewelry as a commodity to picking brands that conveyed some emotional content. He noted that he had developed a whole slew of brands in order to be able to give even competing retailers in the same geographical area, the ability to reach the consumer with one or the other of his branded products.

 

Neelesh Hundekari, principal at international consulting firm A.T. Kearney, noted that luxury demand in India, which he pegged at $4.76 billion, was slated to grow at 21 percent. 

 

He added that in addition to the actual demand, due to a variety of reasons including the non-availability of the product of choice, there was also a latent demand (of unfulfilled aspirations) of some $3 billion in the Indian luxury segment.