Montreal firm overcomes obstacles to construct lab-grown diamond market

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Philipe Henriques has at all times had reservations in regards to the diamond trade. “I’m fairly certain quite a lot of us have seen the film Blood Diamond,” the highschool social research trainer mentioned. The 2006 movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a diamond smuggler in civil war-era Sierra Leone, the place warlords power captive males to sift for the dear stones by means of muddy water at gunpoint.

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“I don’t assume it’s at all times like that,” he mentioned. “However I nonetheless assume there are quite a lot of injustices.”

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Even so, Henriques knew he’d want to provide his girlfriend, Marjorie Gonzalez, a diamond engagement ring when he proposed. In June, he designed a lab-grown stone at Philippe and Co., a jeweler in Montreal, and offered it to Gonzalez, who known as it the “ring of her goals.”

He was glad, too. His conscience was clear, just like the pear-shaped diamond he purchased, which was set in a gold band with a tapered end, smaller diamonds working their manner as much as the principle stone.

It seems, millennials reminiscent of Henriques are a key demographic driving the expansion of the lab-grown diamond trade, however there wasn’t a homegrown supply till Montreal-based Groupe RSL Inc. in September turned the primary firm in Canada to create one.

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Making lab diamonds requires a mixture of information and experience that wasn’t beforehand current right here, Luke Sinclair, co-founder and chief monetary officer of Groupe RSL, mentioned. It’s data the corporate has needed to construct from scratch, however the potential payoff could possibly be excessive as a result of lab-grown diamonds’ market share is steadily rising, and is predicted to make up 10 per cent of the worldwide diamond trade by 2030.

“It’s additionally creating an entire new market phase or shopper group that didn’t exist earlier than,” Sinclair mentioned. “We’re searching for shoppers who’re of the view that possibly diamonds don’t should be mined … and admire that they’re getting one thing native. They know the place it comes from, from A to B, and that it’s going to be a high-quality product as a result of it’s made in Canada.”

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Lab-grown diamonds had been first produced by Normal Electrical Co. 50 years in the past, however have change into extra widespread as know-how permits them to be grown sooner, cheaper and extra effectively. The marketplace for them is predicted to develop to $49.9 billion in 2030 from $19.3 billion in 2020, and China is the world’s high producer.

Henriques needs his stone had been produced domestically as a substitute of in China. For the reason that stone was sourced from afar, he has lingering doubts about whether or not it was certifiably lab-grown. However there have been no lab-grown diamond firms based mostly in Canada when he bought the ring.

Sinclair plans to capitalize on shoppers reminiscent of Henriques searching for a “native contact.” This, he mentioned, will make Groupe RSL diamonds extra aggressive than these sourced from China and elsewhere.

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The thought to create a diamond-growing enterprise within the first place got here when Sinclair was planning to suggest to his girlfriend, however couldn’t discover a diamond that was socially accountable, domestically produced and environmentally pleasant.

“A part of the explanation we needed to get began is as a result of many of the lab diamonds are coming from abroad, which we imagine didn’t make a lot sense, since many of the diamonds are bought in North America,” he mentioned.

The native contact, nevertheless, comes with an even bigger price ticket.

“Canadian mined diamonds are historically offered at a premium,” Sinclair mentioned. “We imagine that being the primary and solely producer in Canada … and being powered by renewable electrical energy and whatnot will place our product within the premium vary.”

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‘A brand new trade’

Constructing a first-in-Canada lab-grown diamond enterprise hasn’t been with out its challenges.

“Now we have had issue discovering experience, however that primarily pertains to the truth that we’re creating a brand new trade right here,” Sinclair mentioned.

Groupe RSL should additionally cope with a deeply entrenched mined diamond trade. Canada ranks third on this planet within the manufacturing of tough mined diamonds — people who have but to be minimize or processed. It has 5 lively diamond mines, most within the Northwest Territories, and so they produced 18.6 million carats of tough diamonds valued at C$2.25 billion in 2019.

However Canada’s diamond historical past is comparatively younger, hardly older than Henriques. It dates again to 1991 when diamond hunters Chuck Fipke and Stuart Blusson discovered the kimberlite that may change into Ekati, Canada’s first diamond mine. (Ekati is now owned by Vancouver-based miner Lucara Diamond Corp.)

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Across the similar time, the time period “blood diamond,” or “battle diamond,” emerged, as insurgent teams in Central and West Africa waged wars financed by the sale of diamonds to western patrons.

The trade took a public relations hit with the discharge of the Blood Diamond film, which depicts the casual, diamond-centred economic system financing the 1991-2002 Sierra Leone civil conflict, involving little one troopers, warlords and smugglers.

Although it was only a film, it had a profound cultural influence. Some credit score the movie with serving to to bolster The Kimberley Course of Certification Scheme, which has 85 nations making an attempt to stop battle diamonds from getting into the market.

In nature, diamonds kind in carbon veins 100 to 200 kilometres underground, over a span of 1 to three.3 billion years, beneath 900 to 1,200 C of intense warmth and 725,000 kilos of strain per sq. inch — roughly equal to 150 elephants sitting on a scrabble tile.

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However Groupe RSL grows its diamonds in a vacuum, which implies it doesn’t want such strain or time, simply warmth. Sinclair mentioned the vacuum is inside a microwave, and contained in the vacuum is a plasma reactor, which holds a plasma chamber. Right here, diamond seeds simply three to 10 millimetres huge and 0.3 millimetres thick are positioned.

The scientists suck the air out of the vacuum and exchange it with a fuel combination of hydrogen and methane. Then they activate the microwave and warmth the seeds to a excessive temperature, which separates the methane from the carbon atoms, which fall onto the diamond seeds.

The method known as chemical vapour deposition (CVD), although it sounds a bit like science fiction when described.

However Eira Thomas, chief government of Lucara, mentioned CVD just isn’t as environmentally pleasant as shoppers might imagine.

“Lab-grown diamonds aren’t essentially greener diamonds,” she advised Kitco Information. “The creation of a diamond in a lab requires super base-load energy. Sure, when you’re plugged right into a inexperienced grid, then possibly that’s doable. However you’re definitely not doing that with solar energy.”

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CVD requires fairly a little bit of electrical energy, Sinclair mentioned, however “being based mostly in Quebec, we’re fortunate sufficient to drag hydroelectricity from the grid on the lowest vitality costs in North America. The method may be very, very sustainable. We produce our diamonds with a really small footprint, and we’ve got renewable vitality, next-to-zero emissions.”

Even so, an environmentally pleasant product just isn’t sufficient to sway shopper opinion, he mentioned.

“As our society turns into extra environmentally acutely aware, we’ve seen {that a} shopper is mostly not prepared to vary their behaviour based mostly solely on sustainability,” he mentioned. “Tesla’s sort of proven us that when a shopper is offered with two viable choices, it is going to select the extra sustainable possibility.”

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Cheaper, however not low cost

The price of producing lab-grown diamonds has considerably decreased over the previous few years, Sinclair mentioned, but it surely’s nonetheless costly, particularly if you add in transport prices.

“You must take particular care to make sure they’re shipped in a safe method, which may be very distinctive to our product. They’re small, however insecure,” he mentioned. “It’s very totally different than the entire mining trade. It’s rather more predictable within the sense that what we put in, we all know what we’ll get out after a sure period of time, however that doesn’t make it cheap; it simply makes it totally different.”

Henriques paid $6,000 for his 1.72-carat diamond and band from Philippe and Co. He estimates he would have paid $10,000 for the stone alone had he bought a mined diamond.

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“I ended up getting a a lot bigger diamond than I’d have if it had been mined,” he mentioned. “Significantly bigger, particularly with at this time’s costs.”

However Laferriere & Brixi Diamantaires Inc., a jewellery purchaser with places in Quebec and New York, mentioned in a weblog publish that the worth of a lab-grown diamond is its deadly flaw. Lab-grown diamonds are cheaper, however retail costs will proceed to fall as they change into extra common, so the worth of the diamond will depreciate over time.

Henriques, nevertheless, is unconcerned in regards to the resale worth, as a result of he doesn’t plan to resell it. Even when mined diamonds had been comparably priced, he mentioned he nonetheless wouldn’t have purchased one.

A $6,000 pretend?

Previous to the Kimberley Course of, a mined diamond benefited from a stage of anonymity. A blood diamond appeared equivalent to an ethically sourced diamond.

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The provision chain of lab-grown diamonds is shorter and extra clear, for higher or for worse. You possibly can detect if a diamond is lab-grown utilizing specialised gear. Some folks, reminiscent of Henriques’ mother and father, imagine that is the mark of an inferior product.

“They thought it was artificial,” Henriques mentioned, “like those you get for a highschool commencement ring.”

Patrick Godin, former chief government of the now defunct Stornoway Diamond Corp., based mostly in Longueuil, Que., advised The Diamond Loupe, “There’s nothing improper with lab-grown diamonds as a product, but it surely can be harmful, as a result of the day you’ve gotten a mixture of artificial and pure diamonds, it may possibly kill the market. If shoppers have no idea what they’re shopping for, their confidence will tank.”

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That’s partly as a result of a diamond’s worth is decided by public notion. Within the Nineteen Thirties, few Individuals proposed with a diamond, however De Beers Group’s A Diamond is Eternally promoting marketing campaign succeeded in equating the dear stone with eternal love, primarily “inventing” the diamond engagement ring.

However millennials reminiscent of Henriques imagine the entire trade is fictitious. The diamond market doesn’t regulate itself, he alleged, however is as a substitute managed by a not-so-invisible hand: the diamond firms themselves. And for many years, 90 per cent of the diamond trade was managed by a single firm, London-based De Beers, which regulated the accessible inventory.

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However, some folks assume diamonds must be price nothing. For one factor, scientists on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise in 2018 discovered that diamonds are extra frequent than beforehand believed, since there are possible one quadrillion tonnes of tough diamonds under the earth’s floor.

Sapphires are a lot rarer than diamonds and price US$25 to $11,000 per carat on common, in comparison with US$1,300 to $16,500 per carat for diamonds, in accordance with Diamond Professional, an internet diamond-buying information.

“I’m exaggerating a little bit bit, however you may make a diamond out of a burnt banana when you actually needed to,” Henriques mentioned.

However even when the intrinsic worth of mined and lab-grown diamonds could also be a query mark, when he appears to be like on the ring on Gonzalez’s finger, “It makes me take into consideration the cash I spent on it,” he mentioned, “but in addition how a lot I like my great wife-to-be.”

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