In 1948, diamond firm De Beers launched a advertising marketing campaign with the slogan “A diamond is forever.” Fifty years later, the corporate created one other marketing campaign justifying the value of diamonds with the slogan, “Isn’t two months’ salary a small price to pay for something that lasts forever?”
Now, De Beers is aggressively chopping costs to convey gross sales up, and you should buy a diamond-making system for $200,000 on Alibaba.
It is a signal that diamond manufacturing is democratizing, stories Ars Technica.
Prior to now 5 years, lab-grown gem gross sales have burgeoned and made the value of mined stones much less interesting, in response to diamond skilled Paul Zimnisky. The lab-grown diamond market was $13 billion final yr and is predicted to succeed in about $22 billion by 2031.
Ankur Daga, CEO of the advantageous jewellery firm Angara, estimated that half of all engagement rings bought this yr may have lab-grown stones, a major leap from 2% in 2018.
“The diamond industry is in trouble,” Daga advised CNBC in June.
As of press time, pure 1-carat diamonds value round $4,000 whereas lab-grown diamonds of the identical weight go for round $620.
How a lab-grown diamond machine works
The 44-ton system makes use of high-pressure excessive temperature (HPHT) know-how to take a diamond seed, or a tiny diamond particle that begins the entire course of, and rework it right into a lab-grown diamond. Alibaba focuses extra on business-to-business merchandise, so the machine they’ve on the market would probably be purchased and utilized by an organization with specialised information.
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Lab-grown diamonds are as much as 90% inexpensive than pure diamonds and look precisely the identical to the human eye. They will solely be advised aside with particular gear in knowledgeable gemological lab.
Additionally they do not carry the identical environmental and social issues as naturally discovered diamonds, which should be mined in unsafe circumstances.
Even with this type of development, and machines just like the one bought via Alibaba, Zimnisky says that naturally-found diamonds will nonetheless have a spot sooner or later.
“Human desire for rare and valuable objects runs pretty deep within us,” Zimnisky advised NPR. “I don’t think that’s going to, all of a sudden, change.”
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