By TN Ashok
One of the world’s largest and most sophisticated synthetic diamond research and development facility was opened recently at Harwell, near Oxford, by Element Six, a De Beers subsidiary, claimed to be a global leader in synthetic diamond. The unveiling of this centre has far reaching consequences for the global diamond industry including India, which face a severe shortage of rough diamonds.
The US $32m Global Innovation Centre (GIC) opened by UK’s Science Minister David Millet, has tremendous significance for not just the global diamond industry vis a vis the “ lab grown diamonds “ a.k.a “ synthetic diamonds/cultured diamonds” but also for the Indian diamond industry hit severely by a supply shortage from Africa and the fierce competition from China.
(Element Six is a member of the De Beers Group of Companies, its majority shareholder. It designs, develops and produces synthetic diamonds, and operates worldwide with its head office registered in Luxembourg, and primary manufacturing facilities in U.S., China, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, South Africa and the U.K. )
To understand the significance of this centre one has to first understand why the centre was launched and what is it that it will do. Says Walter Huehn, Element Six CEO, “Our new state-of-the-art Global Innovation Centre will consolidate and strengthen our innovation capability. For the first time in the global synthetic diamond industry, we can partner with customers to rapidly design, manufacture and test market-ready solutions all under ‘one roof.’ Quite simply the GIC puts Element Six at the forefront of diamond technology.”
The 5,000 square metres Harwell facility of Element Six, employing over 100 scientists and technologists, will help develop a pipeline of innovative synthetic diamond and related super-material products for customers, in industries ranging from oil and gas drilling to precision machining and electronics. The applications represent a leap frog into never seen before applications across these markets with promising return on investments.
Diamonds are more known popularly for their use in jewellery as sparklers but little is known about their abrasive strength and as advanced manufacturing materials that can help to improve productivity, reduce energy consumption and foster technology leaps never before considered in a multitude of applications.
Here are some of the recent noted wide ranging applications other than gem application:
A Synthetic Diamond Road-Pick that has become the industry leader due to a lifespan 40 times that of a normal road pick
Synthetic diamond tweeter domes for Bower & Wilkins 800 Series Diamond loudspeakers, the winner of The Queen’s Award for Enterprise
Innovation; Used as sensors in the Large Hadron Collider.
Element Six super-material solutions are being deployed in cutting, grinding, drilling, shearing and polishing, while the extreme properties of synthetic diamond beyond hardness are already opening up new applications in a wide array of industries such as optics, water treatment, semiconductors and sensors.
Currently there are only handful CVD gem-quality diamond producers. Of course, De Beers’ Element Six is believed to have the best technology. However, officially, it is not yet active in the man-made gem-quality diamond business. (Page One)
What is significant is that De Beers may not be far away from a decision to enter this market. As they have the “best synthetic mine” and have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing technologies, taking out patents, acquiring independent marketing experience (some 1000 retail outlets soon?), it doesn’t make sense that they will leave this business to others.
De Beers will not walk away from a golden opportunity like that, would it? De Beers is believed to be preparing to go back to polished manufacturing (natural, of course) either through its own facilities or contracting its rough to others (in India). But having the facilities would make it easier to polish synthetics as well. If that happens, none knows that it will at this juncture, and then the company would probably not use the word “synthetics” . Even De Beers would swing to use of the term lab grown instead of synthetic in order to promote its own business which has drastically shrunk from 85% to under 35%, reducing its world dominance. Like others its perhaps beginning to sees a future in lab grown diamonds to alleviate the world-wide shortage of rough cut diamonds and regain its predominant position in the industry. A step before that is perhaps to deploy it for industrial uses as mentioned earlier.
Both USA and China have seen the tremendous future of lab grown diamonds. In the USA, an emerging producer of lab grown diamonds is Scio diamonds. Scio Diamond Technology Corporation is a synthetic diamond manufacturer that produces near flawless single-crystal diamonds for gemstone and industrial applications, in Greenville, SC. The company produces chemical vapor deposition (CVD) gem-sized synthetic diamond crystals using processes pioneered by Apollo Diamonds and has acquired Apollo Diamond’s technology and assets including several U.S. patents on the processes.
While lab grown diamonds concept is yet to catch up in a big way in India, some Indians have joined the race by locating facilities outside India. As India might be losing its status as world’s largest hub for diamond cutting and polishing to China, a few Indians in a corner of Singapore have achieved a significant breakthrough.
These Indians have helped to create one of the world’s largest diamond mines for growing rare, colourless diamonds. IIa Technologies Pte. Ltd., started in 2005, has emerged as one of the largest producers of Type IIa diamonds, the purest and rarest form of the rock that is found in less than 2 per cent of the earth-derived yield.
Others could follow this example and create such facilities within India to help alleviate its shortage of rough cut diamonds, which has drastically shrunk in the last few years following Africa’s beneficiation programme under which it has stopped exporting rough cut diamonds to India and elsewhere but created its own cutting and polishing centres. China has moved ahead of India in this race with government support to help Africa set up some of these cutting and polishing centres.
Besides investing heavily in Africa to secure its supply of natural resources, it has also entered in a barter trade with African countries for diamonds getting ahead of India in the race.
India perhaps needs a wakeup call to Lab Grown diamonds and disassociate itself from the lobbies that are decrying its entry into the consumer markets. As supplies shrink and prices fluctuate violently consequently, lab grown diamonds offer the best alternative to mined diamonds which have tags. They are: :
Blood Diamonds – Gory stories of slave labour used in Africa ( Sierra Leone and Angola ) leading to Blood Diamonds
Conflict Diamonds – Illegal supply of diamonds through armed rebels in the dark continent seeking to overthrow democratically elected governments/ terrorists trading diamonds for arms and ammunition / diamonds used for money laundering by terrorists/corrupt politicians/ businessmen without scruples
Unethical Diamonds : Siphoning off of the funds generated by diamond mining going into the pockets of a few powerful politicians and leaving the community of workers that produces them largely still impoverished and sick. (Page two)
Non Green Diamonds : Diamonds produced by companies in utter violation of environmental laws leading to severe ecological damage such as poisoned rivers, severe land erosion , deforestation.
It’s unfortunate that some of the leading players in the diamond trade have taken it upon themselves to run down the lab grown diamond business. They are sought to be destroyed by false allegations while it’s a fact that they have bailed out many businesses and employment in India. Even leading Indian diamond traders are involved in this conspiracy, industry sources allege, which strongly believes that “Grown diamonds need to be stopped at any cost”. This may well pave the way to an industry suicide or a major catastrophe.
Why commit harakiri when undoubtedly lab grown diamonds offer the best solution in terms of purity and easy access and that which come without tags or stains. Why not take it then?