Several traceability systems have been introduced in the last six months, spurred by sanctions against Russian-mined stones.
By Victoria Gomelsky
Nov. 20, 2023
Tracing the path of a diamond from the mine where it originated through the global supply chain is not as straightforward as it might seem — especially for consumers who make an effort to know the source of their purchases, from coffee beans to clothing.
The reasons include a longstanding industry practice of aggregating rough diamonds from different mines, the number of intermediaries involved in transforming a raw stone into a cut and polished gem, and the fragmented and global nature of the trade itself.
An equally powerful reason may be that neither the jewelry industry nor consumers prioritized it. “Everything was sold based on size and quality; it was never sold based on origin,” said Susan Jacques, the president and chief executive of the Gemological Institute of America (G.I.A.), headquartered in Carlsbad, Calif.
Now, primarily because of the war in Ukraine and the additional sanctions expected soon on diamonds from Russia (the world’s biggest diamond exporter by volume), “knowing where a diamond has come from is becoming essential information,” Al Cook, the chief executive of the De Beers Group, told an audience at a jewelry trade show in June in Las Vegas.
Mr. Cook used the show to promote a blockchain platform that the mining giant hopes will become the industry’s new gold standard of traceability. Known as Tracr, the company, which uses high-speed photography to create a digital twin of a rough diamond, was founded in 2018. But Wesley Tucker, chief executive of Tracr, said that the complexity of creating a scalable solution that could be easily adopted by the entire industry, combined with pandemic-related delays, held up its rollout until now.
De Beers, which owns Tracr, is promoting it as the backbone of its new consumer-facing initiative, the Origin suite of services by De Beers Institute of Diamonds, a company division that offers grading, training and educational services to the industry.
Origin Services was designed to educate diamond buyers about their stones far beyond the basic details known as the “Four C’s” (cut, color, clarity and carat weight), David Prager, chief brand officer and executive vice president of the De Beers Group, said on a video call earlier this month from De Beers’s office in London.
Diamonds with De Beers Code of Origin inscriptions now come with QR code tags. When a customer scans a code, it opens a site with multimedia content ranging from verification that the diamond is natural rather than lab-grown to identifying whether it originated in Botswana, Canada, Namibia or South Africa, the four countries where De Beers operates mines.
(However, a Code of Origin inscription — which can be added to a polished stone weighing at least 0.08 carats that is sourced by De Beers Group from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa or Canada — is added only if the diamond manufacturer who bought the gem in rough form from De Beers Group has sent it to De Beers Institute of Diamonds for inscription, a company spokeswoman said.)
A more detailed content program, called Origin Story, is being tested at some retail stores in the United States and expected to go live there sometime in 2024.
“In scanning that QR code, they’ll be able to understand the character of their diamond,” Mr. Prager said. “Its rarity, what its ‘four C’s’ are and what we’re calling birthmarks, otherwise known as inclusions: What has caused them? What do they mean?
“Then, we’ll talk about how a rough diamond is formed, who the people are that have brought it to market. And then we’ll talk about its impact, which could be everything from our project to protect elephants and endangered wildlife to the advancement of women and girls to other programs in the natural world or in our communities.”
Tracr is one of several traceability programs introduced over the past six months. Some, such as the new AutoScan Plus system from the Israeli diamond technology provider Sarine, are data-based while others rely on systems of warranties or audits.
Together, the traceability programs are helping to “usher in a brand-new era for the global diamond supply chain,” said Paul Zimnisky, a diamond industry analyst based in the New York metropolitan area. “We’re going to see a level of transparency like we’ve never seen with diamonds before.
“Fast-forward X number of years into the future. When you buy a natural diamond, you’re going to have the ‘four C’s,’ but you’re also going to have the origin of the diamond probably on the certificate.”
The fact that the programs are coming to market now is no coincidence. The Group of 7 nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — is soon expected to announce sanctions prohibiting the import of gemstones mined in Russia, including those cut and polished in other countries. (In 2022, the Biden administration banned the import of rough diamonds from Russia, but did not specify what to do with Russian stones cut and polished elsewhere.)
While there is a clear sense of urgency among luxury brands and diamond jewelry retailers in North America, Europe and Japan to be able to verify that a diamond was not mined in Russia, the trade’s growing interest in origin predates current events.
Take the new provenance-based program created by Nicholas Moltke, a former De Beers sales executive. In 2019, Mr. Moltke founded Botswanamark, a company that sells loose diamonds that he said are certified, through blockchain technology, to have been mined responsibly in Botswana.
“The social and economic value of diamonds is very different depending on where they come from in the world,” Mr. Moltke said on a video call earlier this month from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. He moved to the city, a diamond trading hub, after leaving De Beers, where he had worked for 16 years, including five years in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital.
“I saw firsthand how these diamonds do good and how important it is for those communities who live off them,” he said.
This month, International Diamond Center, a 12-store jewelry retailer based in Clearwater, Fla., is planning to introduce Botswanamark’s branded diamonds at four of its stores, Mr. Moltke said, adding that the consumer experience will be similar to the De Beers model.
Greg Kwiat, chief executive of Kwiat Diamonds, a diamond jewelry brand in New York City, said the company’s Mine to Shine traceability program, introduced in June, was likewise based on a desire to show how diamonds positively affect the communities in Africa where they are mined.
Consumers who buy Kwiat diamonds are able to follow their stones from the mine through the stages of cutting and setting into jewelry. “Right now, we’re sharing videos and imagery of the process as it’s occurring,” Mr. Kwiat said. “At the end, you get this aggregated video from start to finish as a wonderful shareable memento.”
Pressure From Consumers
Proving mined diamonds’ origins is something the diamond industry has focused on since the late 1990s, when the blood-diamond crisis shook consumer confidence in the trade. In 2003, a coalition of governments, civil society and diamond industry established the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, aimed at preventing the flow of conflict diamonds.
“The industry had to police itself to ensure that conflict diamonds didn’t enter the pipeline,” Mr. Kwiat said. “That started us on a pathway to really make sure what we sell does good in the world.”
At G.I.A., the effort to provide diamond origin services began in 2015, in response to growing pressure from consumers, Ms. Jacques, its president and chief executive, said.
In 2019, GIA introduced the Diamond Origin Report, and in 2022, the Source Verification Service. Both use, the G.I.A. said in a statement, “verified, audited documents including Kimberley Process certificates to confirm country-of-origin information provided by mining companies and link that information to diamonds submitted to G.I.A. for grading.”
In April, G.I.A. also announced it had joined the Tracr platform, so it would be adding provenance to diamond-grading reports.
And in mid-November, Stephanie Gottlieb, a New York City-based jeweler with 469,000 followers on Instagram, introduced a diamond jewelry collection, called And a Half. Inspired by a trip she took to Botswana in May to visit De Beers’s Jwaneng Mine, the line features diamonds with the company’s Origin Services.
During a video call interview last month, Ms. Gottlieb stressed the importance of making consumers aware that there’s “something to admire and respect about the positive impact that a diamond has had in its lifetime.” She said origin also was a critical way to differentiate natural diamonds from their lab-grown competitors.
“There’s definitely a lot of questions for a young diamond and/or jewelry consumer about lab-grown,” she said. “I’ve taken a stance that I will only sell natural diamonds. I need to be able to stand behind why.”
Lisa Bridge, chief executive of Ben Bridge Jeweler, a Berkshire Hathaway-owned retailer with 35 stores across the western United States and in Alaska and Hawaii, said that very few customers had inquired about the origin of Ben Bridge’s diamonds. Regardless, she said, it was incumbent upon the company to know where its stones were mined.
She recalled helping a customer many years ago who wanted to know the origins of the pink sapphire in a ring. “He said, ‘I want to make sure it’s not one of those’ — and he couldn’t think of the term and I said, ‘A conflict diamond?’” Ms. Bridge said on a call last month.
“That customer wanted to know: Am I buying something that has a good story? Is there something I should be worried about?
“Consumers don’t have to be experts in diamond sourcing around the world,” she added. “They need to be able to trust that we’ve done the work for them.”
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 21, 2023, Section S, Page 11 in The New York Times International Edition. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
