Synthetic diamonds: threat or opportunity? Marcello Manna

It’s the same, but synthetic!

Don’t worry, we will hear this strange phrase among traders all over the world and – to avoid ambiguity – jewelers will have to carefully handle the right terms to not lose sales.

But what is a synthetic diamond? Why is there so much concern among traders? The gemological material called “synthetic diamond” has the same physical, chemical and optical properties of natural diamond. Not like an “imitation”, a stone that imitates the appearance of natural as colorless sapphire, zircon, cub16ic zirconia, etc … a synthetic diamond is not recognizable at naked eye and if you meet someone that does it, do not believe him!

To unveil synthetic diamond you need advanced instruments that, at the moment, you find only in the most important gemological laboratories. Here I will not talk about people who sell undisclosed synthetic diamond as natural, but I will consider marketing features.

Historically, synthetic diamonds are produced by long time and they are used for many purposes for the exceptional physical properties of diamond.

The US FTC rule for gemological identification exists since 1996, but only in last years synthetic diamond have reached the better gemological qualities.

The synthetic diamond’s industry set up a very aggressive marketing policy focusing all, as well as the beauty of the synthetic like the original, on transparency and ethics of the lab product. Synthetic manufacturers try to reach the green sensibility of new generations for the eco-sustainability of production process.

In my opinion, if this is the mainstream to push synthetic sales, the “natural” industry will get peace of mind. First of all, natural diamonds have made so much progress in terms of sustainability, responsibility and ethic about exploitation of diamond fields and workers’ conditions. Companies that deal in diamond mining as Anglo American (DeBeers) and Alrosa, they always develop new campaigns for business sustainability. The UN Kimberley Process Scheme was created in 2002 to ensure the ethical nature of diamonds from the mine to the final consumer and now is giving the first results. At the contrary, why you not wonder how they produce synthetic diamonds? I do not think that there is an industrial production that does not produce damages for our planet and for human rights. About the eco-sustainability, we should go deeper in the entire synthetic diamond supply chain to learn more and more to go beyond a simple claim. If they introduce synthetic diamonds as “conflict-free” not involved in civil wars, they mean that naturals are “conflict”! We need the evidence that the entire synthetic production process is absolutely “free” and then prove that naturals are not “conflict-free”, please!

As you can see, the arguments are light and I close the game mentioning that the youngest natural diamond is 900.000 years old, but this is another story…a natural story!

Antwerp, September 16th, 2016