Even-Zohar Gives Israeli Bourse Review of Synthetic Diamonds

IDE President Shmuel Schnitzer, Chaim Even-Zohar and IDE Industry Committee Chairman Yoram Dvash.

(IDEX Online News) – The concerns surrounding cases of undisclosed synthetic diamonds in parcels of natural diamonds was seen as hundreds of Israel Diamond Exchange (IDE) members attended a presentation on the issue by diamond industry analyst Chaim Even-Zohar.

Even-Zohar’s presentation: Synthetic diamonds: the financial, trade and legal aspects, provided comprehensive information on the size of the problem of synthetic diamonds in the overall global diamond trade.

Even-Zohar allayed fears among Israeli traders, saying the Ramat Gan bourse was the "cleanest" of all global diamond centers as far as synthetics were concerned.

He explained that the creation of lab-grown diamonds and the large expansion in production in recent years had been aided by the machines for producing them being easier to acquire than ever before. In addition, the prices of the machines was relatively low at around $500,000.

"I estimated in my 2012 Diamond Pipeline that the trade in synthetic stones was around $500 million of overall polished trade last year, but that may actually have been on the low side."

Describing the methods for creating lab-grown diamonds, Even-Zohar explained that the the older High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) method still played a critical role as it is used to improve the color of CVD-created diamonds.

He said that 60 stones could be grown on one platter with an average size of 1.3 carats in just 140 hours by Scio Diamond Technology in the United States and an average of 4,900 carats per year per platter.

Even-Zohar also spoke of the danger of lab-grown diamonds to the younger generation, since diamond growers emphasized the environmentally clean way in which they are created compared with the dirt, destruction of the environment and slave labor which they claimed were prevalent in the mining of diamonds.

IDE President Shmuel Schnitzer said: "I hope now, with the whole diamond world looking at the synthetic issue that we will be able to find a solution. There is no need to panic and exaggerate, but we need to defend our natural diamond industry. If there are customers who want synthetic diamond jewelry, then we have no problem with that just as long as it is disclosed."