01 Nov 2022

De Beers expects to sell over P14 billion worth of diamonds to Botswana factories this year thereby exceeding its annual sales target.

The revelation was made by the company’s chief executive officer Mr Bruce Cleaver during the ongoing natural diamond summit in Gaborone Tuesday.

In a media briefing, he said De Beers had made strides in extending the diamond value chain in Botswana in an effort to bring new meaningful ways in mining beneficiation.

“Some highlights on the commitment to extend diamond value chain beneficiation in Botswana include expansion of the De Beers sight holder sales which actively collaborated with 21 sight holder factories in the beginning of the year and we are anticipating a 50 per cent growth on sight holder sales collaborations by the end of this year,” he said.

The  growth,  he said,  indicated  that industry services were  finding it commercially attractive to set up facilities in Botswana, hence  it was anticipated that employment  would grow significantly by the  end of  the year.

In addition to employment creation, new diamond factories offered world class technology resulting in improved efficiencies and skills transfer which would in turn significantly improve accuracy, he said. Mr Cleaver said his company considered transparency and traceability of diamonds as key elements in the success of the diamond industry.

In that regard, he  said, De Beers Group had deployed the TracrTM blockchain platform for its diamond production.

“TracrTM is the world’s only distributed diamond block chain that starts at the source and provides tamper-proof source assurance at scale, enabling sight holders to provide an immutable record of a diamond’s provenance and empowering jewellery retailers to have confidence in the origin of the diamonds they purchase,” explained Mr Cleaver.

He said the platform could be used to validate diamond origins and eliminate illegitimate trading by protecting the supply chain and locking the sources of payments.

 The technology, Mr Cleaver said, would be used to ensure that diamonds came from an ethical and reliable source and that they complied with all regulations.

He said the many challenges  recently experienced by the  natural  diamonds industry had  inspired  De  Beers to take a  holistic look at the  social, economic, cultural and political  landscape in which it operated. Mr Cleaver said as a result De Beers was fully behind Botswana’s bid to house the Kimberly Process (KP) secretariat.

“The KP is a key part of the natural diamond watchdog hence it is imperative to collectively ensure that it is housed in Botswana to enable it to effectively carry on its mandate in support of clean mining of natural diamonds,” he said.

He said De Beers remained committed to the mechanism especially because of its first-hand knowledge on the good diamonds did to communities when managed properly.

Cautioning that natural diamonds were facing stiff competition, especially from laboratory-grown diamonds, Mr Cleaver however said from the perspective of social and economic development, natural and laboratory-grown diamonds were significantly different. 

 Laboratory-grown diamonds provided little economic and social benefit to nations or their people since their sole benefit was to a few stakeholders, said the De Beers chief. 

Mr Cleaver said Botswana  was  testament of how diamond deposits could be properly leveraged to achieve substantial economic and social development.

He said since the discovery of diamonds, the country had achieved an impressive economic development record.

“The judicious fiscal policy has allowed Botswana to reap the rewards of their vast diamond reserves thus it  is import for diamonds producing countries to benchmark  on Botswana how elements of the diamond industry continue to make a meaningful contribution to inclusive and  sustainable developments,”  Mr Cleaver  said.

With the natural diamond mining landscape evolving daily, Mr Cleaver said Botswana would in future require to enrich collaboration and understanding of systems across the diamond value chain. ends