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De Beers Partners to Offer Diamond Grading Reports in the US
De Beers Group Industry Services is now the exclusive grader of New York-based RDI’s “Rare and Forever” diamonds.
De Beers Group Industry Services has entered the U.S. market for the first time, becoming the exclusive grader of New York-based RDI’s “Rare and Forever” diamonds.
New York—De Beers has starting grading diamonds in the U.S. market for the first time through a partnership with New York-based RDI Diamonds.
The company’s lab, De Beers Group Industry Services (formerly known as the International Institute of Diamond Grading & Research), is the exclusive grader of RDI’s “Rare and Forever” diamonds, a brand launched for the partnership.
De Beers Group Industry Services also will assist in various educational activities and sales training, in which the lab will explain how it grades diamonds and share grading standards so sales teams understand and can explain to consumers why their stone has received a certain grade.
Andrew Rickard, vice president of operations at RDI Diamonds, told National Jeweler the company is receiving better-than-anticipated responses from jeweler clients about the collaboration.
“Their technology is very advanced,” he said of De Beers. “It’s the most consistently accurate lab I’ve seen, and the jewelers are saying that too. We’re excited for this opportunity.”
De Beers Group Industry Services’ grading methodology combines traditional standards with 21st-century technology and techniques, including the Falcon color grading machine; the Eagle diamond grading instrument; DiamondSure, a compact device used to tell natural diamonds from lab-grown and diamond simulants; and the larger DiamondView, which checks all diamonds referred by the DiamondSure.
It has labs in London, Antwerp and Surat.
While the partnership with RDI marks the first time the lab has offered grading services to a wholesale diamond company in the United States, a De Beers spokesperson said it will look to enter more partnerships in the market in the future.
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