Gemstones with no resale value: Has demand peaked for lab-grown diamonds?
Amid falling prices and oversupply, local jewellers remain sanguine, even as industry leaders shift their focus back to natural diamonds
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LATE last month, gemstone giant De Beers announced that it would stop producing lab-grown diamonds (LGDs) for jewellery – just six years after its surprise 2018 move to enter the fray, following years of resistance.
The backpedalling comes on the heels of a good run in the last few years for LGDs, which took the jewellery market by storm. Optically, chemically and physically identical to natural or mined diamonds, they are graded by international laboratories such as the Gemological Institute of America, but indicated as lab-grown.
Paul Zimnisky, a leading diamond analyst based in New York, says LGDs went from a nearly-zero market share in 2015 to accounting for around 20 per cent of the total diamond market today, or about US$18 billion in global sales.
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