De Beers stakes its
reputation on spotting the difference
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[August 17, 2016]
By Barbara Lewis
MAIDENHEAD, England (Reuters) - In nature
it takes billions of years to produce a diamond, or a laboratory can
grow one in days and to the untrained eye, it looks the same.
For De Beers, telling the difference is fundamental to protecting its
reputation as the world's leading diamond firm by value and holder of a
roughly 30 percent share of the market for genuine rough diamonds.
It guarantees all its own mined diamonds are natural, authenticates
diamonds for third parties and makes money from selling its detection
equipment.
Increasingly sophisticated technology to produce synthetic diamonds
drives industry-wide demand for the means to determine whether a stone
was created in the earth's mantle or is man-made.
The difference is more than emotional. Synthetic diamonds sell for an
estimated 30 percent less than the real thing and have no investment
value. Any unscrupulous retailer passing off the man-made as natural
would be committing fraud.
"For the diamond business, the one thing you don't want is for consumers
to lose trust," Jonathan Kendall, president of De Beers' International
Institute of Diamond Grading and Research, said.
Far from the diamond-rich kimberlite rock of South Africa, staff at a De
Beers laboratory in leafy Maidenhead, west of London, say they can
determine with 100 percent accuracy whether a diamond is natural or
synthetic.
De Beers itself has a unit that makes synthetic diamonds, but only for
industrial usages, such as drilling and cutting. All the rough diamonds
De Beers sells for jewelery are real.
If anything, the pressure on De Beers to be the industry standard has
increased as its indebted parent Anglo American <AAL.L> has placed it at
the core of a slimmed down portfolio, with a view to strengthening the
balance sheet following a commodities rout.
Approximately 300,000 carats of synthetic diamonds are produced a year,
compared with approximately 130 million carats of rough diamonds mined
annually, analysts say.
They also say technological advances will produce more synthetic
diamonds and of better quality, while natural production is expected to
stagnate.
De Beers guarantees all its own mined diamonds are natural. It also
authenticates diamonds for third parties and makes money from selling
its detection equipment.
Kendall says that since De Beers took back a distribution license in
late 2012 from the Gemological Institute of America, the world's biggest
diamond grading laboratory, it has sold tens of millions of pounds worth
of equipment to detect synthetic diamonds to other diamond traders and
jewelers.
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Uncut diamonds from southern Africa and Canada are seen at De Beers
headquarters in London, Britain, January 17, 2011. REUTERS/Stefan
Wermuth/File Photo
THE SIXTH ELEMENT
De Beers' synthetic diamond unit Element Six, the world's leading
supplier of synthetic industrial diamonds, takes its name from the place of
carbon, from which diamonds are made, in the periodic table.
De Beers does not break out Element Six's results, but says demand is affected
by factors such as a slow-down in drilling because of cheaper oil.
As a whole, De Beers managed a profit in the first half of the year, when Anglo
American made a loss.
At the Maidenhead laboratory, the 80 scientific and technical staff describe
their relationship with Element Six as poacher versus game keeper, or cat and
mouse, as Element Six strives to produce synthetic diamonds that are
indistinguishable from real - so far an unattainable goal.
Two techniques are used. High Pressure, High Temperature (HPHT) involves
dissolving carbon, usually in the form of graphite, in a molten metal at a very
high temperature and exerting pressure of 55,000 atmospheres – the equivalent of
standing the Eiffel Tower upside down on a drinks can.
A second method, Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD), mixes a hydrocarbon, such as
methane, and hydrogen in a vacuum chamber and introduces a seed diamond around
which multiple diamonds can form.
In both cases, the resulting structure differs from the natural shape created
over billions of years. It can be disguised by cutting and polishing but the
luminescence imaging of the De Beers detection equipment makes the difference
obvious.
Apart from bars that show up across the synthetic structure, once inside the
detection equipment, a laboratory grown diamond also sparkles with a different
color from a natural one.
"Looking at luminescence colors using ultraviolet light is common practice in
gemology, but the DiamondView instrument from De Beers Technologies is unique,"
the company said.
(Editing by William Hardy)
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