Lab-grown rocks and fewer weddings have put a huge damper on the market. On the bright side, a big dazzler is now affordable for many
www.theguardian.com
Key takeaways, since people won’t read the article…
1. De Beers, the biggest name in diamonds, reported last month that it began 2024 with a huge $2bn stockpile of diamonds and had not managed to shift it by the year’s end. The company has cut production in its mines by 20%, and its owner, Anglo American, has
put it up for sale.
2. Tenoris tracks diamond prices in more than 2,000 shops across the US. The average price of a one carat natural diamond peaked at $6,819 in May 2022 (£5,422.67 at the time) and by last December had fallen to $4,997 (£3,923.83), a 26.7% fall.
3. The equivalent lab-grown diamond price is down from $3,410 (£2,599.38) in January 2020 to just $892 (£700.43) in December, a 73.8% fall.
4. …but the biggest change is the
emergence of lab-grown diamonds, created in plasma reactors.
They used to take weeks to make but can now be grown in a few hours, compared with billions of years for natural stones.
It’s a wrap.
Supply is high. Demand is low. Market is flooded because diamonds can be produced on demand in hours.
I’d like this to be a win for Africa, but the mines are now worthless. The labs that create diamonds are where the money will be moving forward.
