In a bid to keep the shine on struggling natural diamond sales, industry giant De Beers has launched a verification device to differentiate natural gems from their laboratory-grown competitors, the company announced on Monday. 

The “DiamondProof” device is meant to confirm the authenticity of precious stones “formed deep within the Earth billions of years ago”, De Beers said in a press statement, at a time when the industry faces strong competition and plummeting prices.

A black scanner-like machine available at retailers in the US, detects “the distinct chemical compositions of natural diamonds”, De Beers said. 

“The natural diamond industry is in a constant effort to create separation from lab-grown” gems, which are cheaper and only take a few weeks to be produced, diamond industry analyst Edahn Golan told AFP. 

Golan said the launch “is part of a wider effort in the diamond industry to pull itself by the bootstraps” through marketing, pricing, and consumer education. 

Diamond sales have struggled to recover since the Covid-19 pandemic, facing a downturn in consumer spending, particularly in China. 

Diamond-producing countries like Botswana, where the stones account for 30% of GDP and 80% of exports, have been hard hit. 

Mining titan Anglo-American announced last May that it planned to sell off De Beers, which was founded in 1888 by the British colonial figure Cecil Rhodes and has long dominated the trade in diamonds from Southern Africa.

–      Nampa/ AFP