Fall 2000 Gems & Gemology - Gemfrance

De Beers’s newly stated direction. Reporting from the
World Diamond Congress in Antwerp, held July 17–19,
GIA President William Boyajian supplied the following
information.
As a result of a highly publicized strategic review by
the consulting firm Bain & Company, of Boston, De
Beers announced to its sightholders on July 12 that it
would end its efforts to control world diamond supply
and instead focus its energies on building global diamond
demand. De Beers’s key strategy is to be the “supplier of
choice” in the industry. Although it will not abandon the
market to its own self-interest, it will end its former
broad-brush “custodial” role of matching worldwide supply
to demand. Instead, the company will work to
become “a more finely calibrated instrument designed
primarily to serve the interests of De Beers and its main
clients,” as announced by Nicholas Oppenheimer in his
recent Chairman’s Message.
In addition, De Beers will be discontinuing the use
of “Central Selling Organisation” (CSO) in favor of a
new identity as the “Diamond Trading Company”
(DTC), and will allow its clients to leverage this name
along with their own individual branded names. DTC
will appear with the famous slogan “A diamond is forever”
in new diamond ads, and a new “Forevermark”
logo has been introduced (figure 1). However, De Beers
will reserve its super-brand “De Beers” name for the De
Beers Group of Companies alone. A set of “best practice”
principles is being established for sightholders, to
ensure continued consumer confidence in the allure
and mystique of untreated natural diamonds through
their commitment to the highest professional and ethical
standards. Another important component of the
new strategy, a special policy statement, involves the
introduction of objective criteria that sightholders must
meet by demonstrating efficient distribution and marketing
abilities.
Figure 1. Diamonds to be sold through De Beers’s
Diamond Trading Company may be branded with
the “Forevermark,” which will also be an important
advertising tool.
A key goal for De Beers is to increase shareholder
value, and one way to do this is to reduce its diamond
stockpile. With the emergence of new diamond producers
in recent years, the supply aspect of the diamond
industry has become much more competitive. Too often
we use the cliché “competition is good.” Yet De Beers’s
new strategy may very well propel the world’s leading
diamond organization into an even stronger leadership
position. Clearly, De Beers’s stated new direction is one
of the most monumental decisions ever cast by the
group, and it will no doubt have a huge impact on every
level of the diamond pipeline for years to come.
William E. Boyajian
President, Gemological Institute of America
Adapted with permission from the GIA Insider, Vol. 2,
No. 15, July 20, 2000.
COLORED STONES AND ORGANIC MATERIALS
Mosaic ammonite. In almost every gem mining operation,
most of the material recovered is either not of gem
quality or too small for most jewelry purposes. Although
the occasional recovery of large and fine-quality stones
makes mining exciting, it is the commercial value of the
overall production that commonly determines if a mine is
economical. Among “mine-run” material, nongem rough
with good crystal form may be marketed as mineral specimens.
Finding a market for small fragments and pebbles,
however, is another matter entirely.
Recently, at the suggestion of GIA Education vice
president Brook Ellis, Rene M. Vandervelde, chairman of
Korite International in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, provided
the Gem News editors with two samples of some new
mosaic triplets of fossilized ammonite derived from their
mine in Alberta. Instead of the layer of fossilized
ammonite typically seen in “Ammolite” doublets and
triplets, the central layer in these assembled stones was
fashioned from tiny angular flakes of iridescent
ammonite shell that were bound in hard plastic.
The two assembled cabochons examined weighed
1.89 and 0.97 ct (figure 2). Note how well the appearance
of these ammonite assemblages resembles the natural
crackled pattern commonly seen in Ammolite. Even
though the unaided eye can identify these assembled
stones as triplets when viewing them from the side, the
fact that they are assembled from tiny flakes of iridescent
ammonite shell becomes apparent only with magnification,
when the jagged edges of the individual ammonite
shell fragments are readily apparent (figure 3). We also
noted a few flattened gas bubbles trapped along the contact
planes between the glass dome and the plastic central
layer, and between the ammonite fragments and the
surrounding plastic. In the round cabochon, a spherical
gas bubble was observed suspended in the plastic central
layer near the edge of the cabochon (again, see figure 3).
Each assemblage consisted of a transparent glass cap
with an R.I. of 1.52, a central layer of hard transparent
Gem News GEMS & GEMOLOGY Fall 2000 261