De Beers Cuts Diamond Production Due To Declining Supply

April 27th, 2010 - 7:39 pm ICT by Angela Kaye Mason  

De Beers Apr 27 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Surat, called the ‘diamond city of India’, is said to be bracing for a huge rise in diamond prices. This is due to the fact that one of the world’s largest diamond producers has announced that they are cutting back on production because the world’s diamond supply is dwindling.

According to De Beers, they have decided that the best thing to do as of now would be to reduce their production of diamonds to extend the life of their mines. This will cause the expected price of diamonds to rise about 5% a year for the next five years. The company produced 40m carats of diamonds in 2001, a number which was down from the 48m carats produced in 2008. Despite searching for two decades, the diamond industry has found no new diamond deposits to match with the two largest mines in Africa, both owned by De Beers, nor the Russian mines of Alrosa, which is another large diamond producer.

Surat will most definitely be feeling this pinch in the next few years, since they depend almost totally on De Beers for their diamond supply. Traders in the city have recently signed a pact with Russia’s Alrosa which would allow importing directly from that country. Surat has the largest diamond polishing network in the world, and they polish almost 90% of the world’s diamonds. Most of those diamonds are imported.

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