De Beers Partners Up with Singapore Diamond Mint Company to Verify Gems in Diamond Bullion
Sunday, October 22, 2017
In what must be the most momentous business decision, the diamond giant De Beers has worked a partnership with the Singapore Diamond Mint Company. The Singapore Diamond Mint Company, better known as SDM has recently made it to the headlines by its association with a Singapore exchange that made a brainstorming contribution to the investment market. The exchange has come up with diamond investment products that will allow investors to trade in diamonds, which is a first-ever, because so far gold has been the standard asset of investment. However, in hind sight we all knew that diamond is going to make its way into this domain one way or the other, because, with gold ruling the investment market for ages, how far could diamond be?
So, De Beers is the official quality inspector for the Singapore Diamond Mint Company form this point forth. In that, the company will verify the natural origin of all the investment-grade gems for SDM. A subsidiary under De Beers, the International Institute of Diamond Grading & Research or IIDGR also has a role to play in this agreement. The organization will issue a unique ID number for all the diamonds that go into the making of the SDM Diamond Bullion, which is but a plate of diamonds, the size of a credit card. Only the diamonds that are enlisted for trading at the Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange will have these identification numbers. The IIDGR will engrave the number on the stones.
The inspection doesn’t end there though. Every inscribed stone will then be sent to the IIDGR where it would be examined for quality check and only the ones that meet the product specifications will be approved for use in the Diamond Bullion. The gems that are approved by the IIDGR can be legally traded at the exchange.
The process of inspection and verification is an extensive one and De Beers states that it is going to be as thorough as it needs to be to make sure that only the investment-grade, ethically sourced stones are circulated as Diamond Bullions in the exchange. The idea is not to replace gold and other standard investment currencies, but to make use of a potential resource we have at hand. The good news for investors is, unlike gold that fluctuates a lot in value, the prices of diamonds hardly shoot up or plummet. The prices bump though, but only marginally. So, diamond makes a more stable and secure investment currency for people at this point.
Alain Vandenborre, the executive chairman and founder of the Singapore Diamond Exchange, who is also the director of the Singapore Diamond Company says that the identification numbers have a secondary purpose. The number tagging will allow them to track the diamonds and verify them as required. This will give the investors security and confidence of a level never achieved before.
It’s revolutionary, and sooner or later, we expect the idea to catch up with the global population, and between then and now, it doesn’t seem like a long time.
