'De Beers policy shift could be harmful'

In an internal communication to sightholders and other stakeholders, De Beers recently announced its intention to focus on economic production, saying it would not mine "when it does not make good economic sense to do so". De Beers said rather than maintaining production or stockpiling rough diamonds, it would prefer leaving the gemstones in the ground to conserve mining costs and instead focus on new ways to drive retail demand.

"In the context of the new economic realities we now face, this means that our overall production levels will not be as large as they were in the years before the global recession," said De Beers. "The scale and profile of production will also vary from mine to mine, dependent upon the economics of each operation."