The revolution underway in India’s diamond industry

Chintan Suhagiya is simply 26, however already has seven years expertise working in India’s diamond trade.

Beginning out, he ferried diamonds round his firm, based mostly on this planet’s diamond sprucing capital, Surat in western India.

However through the years he learnt the best way to examine diamonds and now he grades their high quality, utilizing specialist gear.

His profession has been reworked by a seismic shift within the diamond trade. Till two years in the past, all of the diamonds he inspected had been pure – pulled from the bottom at diamond mines.

Now he works with diamonds grown in particular machines, a part of the trade that hardly existed 10 years in the past however, due to improved know-how, has seen explosive development.

Lab-grown diamonds (LGDs) so carefully resemble pure diamonds that even specialists must look carefully.

“No bare eye can inform the distinction between pure and lab-grown diamonds,” says Mr Suhagiya.

“The pure diamonds and lab-grown diamonds are so related that when, even after a lab check there was a confusion concerning the origin of a diamond. The diamond needed to be examined twice to be sure that it was a lab-grown,” he says.

Pure diamonds are shaped at nice warmth and stress deep underground and, for the reason that Nineteen Fifties, scientists have been making an attempt to recreate that course of above floor – leading to two methods.

The Excessive Stress Excessive Temperature (HPHT) system is the place a diamond seed is surrounded by pure graphite (a sort of carbon) and uncovered to temperatures of about 1,500C and pressurised to roughly 1.5 million kilos per sq. inch in a chamber.

The second course of known as Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) and entails placing the seed in a sealed chamber full of carbon-rich gasoline and heating to round 800C. The gasoline sticks to the seed, build up a diamond atom by atom.

Whereas these methods emerged within the late twentieth Century, it is solely within the final 10 years that the method has been refined in order that lab-grown diamonds may be made on the proper value and high quality to be offered as jewelry.

“At first, it was tougher, as a result of there have been only a few machines and only a few scientists capable of do it… during the last seven years, as extra experience turned out there out there, we have seen actually huge development,” says Olya Linde, a Zurich-based companion with Bain and Firm’s Pure Sources apply.

Ms Linde says that for the reason that early 2000s the price of producing lab-grown diamonds has halved each 4 years.

Today, a one carat diamond – a well-liked measurement and customary in engagement rings – made in a lab could be round 20% cheaper than its naturally-formed equal.

These falling prices have attracted entrepreneurs.

Snehal Dungarni is the chief government of Bhanderi Lab Grown Diamonds, which he began in 2013. It makes use of the CVD course of to make diamonds.

“We’re capable of monitor the expansion of the diamond, atom by atom, on the highest diploma of purity.

“Comparatively they’re value and time-effective and save mining and extraction prices – making them human and environmentally type,” he says.

India has lengthy performed a key position within the diamond trade – it is estimated that 9 out of 10 of the world’s diamonds are polished in Surat.

Now the federal government desires India to turn into a key participant within the lab-grown diamond enterprise.

The nation already produces round three million lab-grown diamonds a yr, accounting for 15% of world manufacturing, in line with the Ministry of Commerce and Trade. China is the opposite huge producer, with an identical market share.

In January, in an effort to spice up the sector additional, the Indian authorities abolished a 5% tax on imported diamond seeds and introduced funding to assist India develop its personal diamond seed manufacturing.

“As international prosperity will increase, the demand for diamonds will improve,” says Vipul Bansal, joint secretary on the Ministry of Commerce.

With 30 years within the conventional diamond trade, Hari Krishna Exports is India’s main producer of minimize and polished diamonds.

However this yr director Ghanshyambhai Dholakia based a lab-grown diamond enterprise.

“Within the subsequent three to 4 years, we are going to see an enormous demand and development in lab-made diamonds,” he predicts.

However will the brand new enterprise take market share from his conventional diamond enterprise?

“Each pure and lab-made diamonds cater to totally different client segments. And demand exists in each segments,” says Mr Dholakia.

“LGD has opened a brand new client market – center class in India – who’ve cash and can be capable to afford a lab-grown diamond,” he says.

It would take a while for that market to take off in India, although. Most LGDs made in India are exported to the US.

“The Indian market remains to be not prepared, so we as council are selling exhibitions and occasions to create a spot for LGDs. In three to 4 years India can be prepared,” says Shashikant Dalichand Shah, chairman of the Lab Grown Diamond and Jewelry Promotion Council.

Mr Shah is chairman of 9 Diam, a diamond buying and selling firm based by his nice grandfather.

He agrees that manufactured diamonds can have a really totally different place out there from these which were mined.

“A diamond made in a laboratory or a manufacturing unit is a synthetic diamond. So a purchaser who is aware of and loves diamonds will at all times go for an actual diamond,” he says.

He provides that the relative shortage of pure diamonds means they are going to maintain their worth higher.

“Lab-grown diamonds lose their worth after shopping for, whereas in a pure diamond 50% of the worth is retained after shopping for,” he says.

Whereas that could be the case, lab-grown diamonds provide jewelry designers larger flexibility.

“Pure diamonds are so costly you at all times wish to maximise the diamond from the pure stone. Lab-grown diamonds you may design as you need,” says Ms Linde.

“We have seen jewelry the place they’ve minimize holes within the diamonds in order that they dangle and sparkle extra.”

Again in Surat, Chintan Suhagiya is comfortable along with his transfer into the LGD trade, and thinks many others will discover work within the sector.

“The lab-diamond trade goes to offer jobs to hundreds of thousands. This can be an unstoppable trade,” he says.