"We Underestimated Lab Grown Threat," says Anglo CEO

(IDEX Online) - De Beers underestimated the threat from lab growns, Duncan Wanblad, CEO of parent company Anglo American, admitted in an interview with the Financial Times (FT).

"Hindsight would probably show that we might have wanted to have been a little bit more aggressive on the signals we were getting," he said, as Anglo finally progresses towards a sale of the loss-making diamond miner.

The threat to natural stones was fundamental, rather than cyclical, he said in an interview published yesterday (4 August).

"Mostly diamond markets, when they go through dips, recover very rapidly . . .  And I think that there was a full expectation that might be the case here," he said.

"Looking in the rear-view mirror is a much more perfect science than trying to do it in real life."

De Beers shocked the diamond world in May 2018 when it launched Lightbox, its own lab grown company, but in 2025 it said it was shutting the venture down.

Wanblad said about a fifth of the current natural diamond supply was "on its way out over the next 12 months or so".

In the first half of 2026, De Beers reported an average realized rough diamond price of $105 per carat, down 32% year on year, together with an underlying EBITDA loss of $113 million. It has also paused production at its Venetia mine in South Africa.

Anglo has already taken multiple write-downs on De Beers, including a fresh $2.3 billion impairment in February 2026. It is reportedly discussing a possible sale for just $1 billion.

Pic shows Duncan Wanblad, CEO of Anglo American.