ALROSA Introduces Commercial Polished Diamond/Synthetic Detector

(IDEX Online) – The ALROSA Group is launching its first national commercial device for the identification of natural and synthetic polished diamonds – the ALROSA Diamond Inspector.

"The company expects that its relatively low price and high accuracy will allow the detector to be in demand both in Russia and abroad. It will help fight unscrupulous suppliers who mix synthetic stones grown in the laboratory with diamonds of natural origin."

The Diamond Inspector can identify natural polished diamonds, polished diamonds manufactured from synthetic and treated diamonds, non-diamond imitations (simulants), such as cubic zirconia, moissanite, and others, the firm said. The device analyzes both individual diamonds and diamonds set in jewelry.

ALROSA said the device was developed together with specialists from the Federal State Budgetary Institution Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials (TISNCM). A joint venture, Diamond Scientific and Technological Center LLC, will be in charge of its production and sale.

"One of the main competitive advantages of the ALROSA Diamond Inspector is the use of three optical detection methods, which give high assessment reliability," said the General Director of Diamond Scientific and Technological Center LLC, Vladimir Sklyaruk (pictured above). This know-how is protected by an international patent and provides a lower price of devices compared to peers. The price of our detector is $9.9000, while foreign detectors of a similar class can cost up to $18,000-20,000."

"The detector is intended primarily for the use by diamond jewelry manufacturers, jewelry stores, pawnshops, gemologists (experts in precious and semiprecious stones) - according to our estimates the number of potential consumers of such devices worldwide can exceed 350,000. The demand for devices will grow depending on the rate of penetration of undeclared synthetic stones on the market. Unfortunately, the cases of admixing synthetic rough diamonds and polished diamonds manufactured from them have been recorded in the world's largest diamond centers. Our device allows you to determine quickly and with a very high degree of accuracy the true origin of a polished diamond - whether it was made from a rough diamond grown in a couple of weeks in a laboratory or manufactured from a real natural rough diamond hundreds of millions and even billions of years old."

The Diamond Inspector was first demonstrated on March 20 at a meeting of the Public Expert Board at the Assay Chamber of Russia dedicated to the topical issues of synthetic precious stones circulation in the Eurasian Economic Union.