De Beers’ sales perk up
Mbongeni Mguni | Wednesday January 31, 2024 15:36
Preliminary receipts from the latest sales, held in Gaborone, were the highest since the seventh sales cycle last year, after which demand tightened even further, reaching COVID-era lows.
Commenting on the latest sales cycle, De Beers’ CEO, Al Cook, said solid consumer demand for diamonds in the United States over the year-end holiday season had “certainly helped” to stabilise the industry. He said there was certainty that polished diamond prices were increasing again.
Cook added that combined with the restart of rough diamonds imports into India, the trends in polished sales had led to demand for rough increasing substantially in the first sales cycle. While positive, the figures from the first cycle are however 19% down from the same period in 2023, a period during which demand was still surging from a rebound that had begun in 2022.
Cook said while positive signals were emerging in the industry, the prospects for economic growth in many major economies remained uncertain and De Beers expected that it would take some time for rough diamond demand to fully recover.
Demand for rough stones crashed last year due to an oversupply in the midstream and the retail sector as well as economic uncertainty particularly in the United States as well as stiffer competition at certain levels of the market from synthetics.