It was a banner day for blue gemstones, with another blue diamond topping $8 million and a 41-carat sapphire going for $2.3 million.
Forevermark opens grading lab in India
Located in Surat, the new facility dedicated to the De Beers diamond brand will do both grading and inscription.
London--De Beers diamond brand Forevermark has a new $10 million diamond inscription and grading facility in Surat, India.
De Beers CEO Philippe Mellier said they also will look into the potential of widening the Surat facility’s services in the future, “as another way of supporting the surrounding diamond community.”
The main International Institute of Diamond Grading and Research, or IIDGR, is located in Antwerp and specializes in diamond grading as well as developing proprietary equipment for the industry. The IIDGR is the facility connected with the automated melee screener De Beers introduced last year for detecting smaller lab-grown stones.
De Beers said this new facility in Surat is its most technologically advanced Forevermark diamond-grading facility so far, having been equipped with “leading proprietary diamond technology.”
At full capacity, it will be able to process approximately $500 million of diamonds per year.
During the facility’s opening ceremony, Mellier called it “an important investment by De Beers in world-leading technology, which will be an important resource for the Indian diamond trade and will cement Surat’s position at the heart of our industry.”
De Beers initially announced plans for expanding its Forevermark diamond grading services into India in early 2014, in anticipation of the growth the brand is expected to see in the next five to 10 years.
It also said then that it was looking for other diamond markets in which to introduce Forevermark, and will continue to expand in the markets in which they already have a presence.
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