The world’s largest diamond mining company, the De Beers Group, has relaxed purchasing rules for sightholders in a move to address accumulating inventories.
According to reporting by Rapaport News, De Beers has written to customers permitting them to delay purchasing parts of their allocations of two-carat stones and larger for the remainder of the year.
“The allowance is 25 per cent by value for some boxes and 50 per cent for others, and applies to sights eight to 10 — which will take place in September, October and December,” writes Joshua Freedman.
“The new concession is unusual because it allows buyers to push off purchases to a new ITO (intention-to-offer) period. De Beers did not specify when the final deadline would be in early 2024, the sources said.”
Sightholders must purchase at least 65 per cent of non-deferred goods, with failure to do so considered a refusal. De Beers does not usually allow sightholders to defer more than one box per category of rough each six months.
Sales increase for Alrosa
Russian diamond mining company Alrosa has released its first financial statement since March of last year when the conflict in Ukraine began.
Alrosa’s revenue increased in the first half of the year; however, the details concerning the destination of sold diamonds were withheld.
Sales increased to RUB188.16 billion ($AU3.02 billion) for the six months, a modest improvement from RUB187.16 billion ($AU3 billion) the previous year. Profit declined by 35 per cent.
“As of mid-2023, opportunistic diamond midstream participants have developed trade mechanisms to circumvent the impact of the restrictions, especially as it pertains to the trading of Russian diamonds in US dollars,” diamond analyst Paul Zimnisky told Mining.com.
“The diamond industry has had time to digest all of this, so while I do not expect a pending supply shock, I do see the way that the diamond supply chain works to be fundamentally transformed in the medium term.”
The Alrosa report did not include segmented revenue, referring to a government statement permitting companies to limit the publication of any information which could lead to international sanctions.
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Russian rough exports in decline
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