Traceability is becoming an increasingly important part of the natural diamond industry, specifically in terms of being able to verify provenance or origin.

G7 sanctions being applied also make traceability technology more important.

“Traceability has an increasingly important role, and I’m sure we’ll see more about traceability across the industry going forward,” Petra Diamonds CEO Richard Duffy commented to Engineering News & Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview.

The London-listed Petra, which mines diamonds at Cullinan and Finsch in South Africa and at Williamson in Tanzania, is currently trialling two different diamond tracing technologies.

The first is Tracr™, used by De Beers, and the second is Sarine Diamond Journey™.

Provided will be transparency from mine to finger for any individual who purchases a diamond in a jewellery store anywhere in the world.

“If it’s been through this process with us at Petra, they would be able to receive a physical or a virtual certificate, which would say that their polished diamond was cut from a rough diamond recovered, for example, at the Cullinan mine in South Africa.

“It would also contain all of the information around the number of employees at the mine, the social and community projects that are undertaken at the mine and, in due course, it will also include information around carbon footprint – information that reinforces that purchase experience and provides verification of the original provenance of that diamond and the journey it’s been on to reach that particular consumer’s purchase,” Duffy outlined.

Traceability will also allow natural diamonds to be clearly distinguished from laboratory-grown diamonds, because lab-grown diamonds do not participate in traceability technology.

Petra expects to implement this far-reaching traceability during the course of this calendar year, which will enable it to clearly verify that the diamonds:

• are from a Petra mine;
• are natural and not lab grown; and
• are not subject to any sanctions.

“It provides certainty for consumers around the diamond they’re purchasing, and provides a whole lot of information about that particular diamond as well,” Duffy emphasised.

Questioned by Engineering News & Mining Weekly on the current state of the diamond market, Duffy had this to add: “Looking forward, there’s certainly some upside as we move towards the end of the calendar year, and this means that we’re positive, both for the industry and also for ourselves at Petra.

“If you see the prevailing structural supply deficit, where there are very few new diamond mines coming on stream, and the ongoing demand from the broader luxury jewellery segment, that’s all positive, together with growing middle class and growth in high-net-worth individuals.

“India is a good example of that and the US economy has continued to be resilient through this period of high inflation and interest rates.

“We’re positive about the market in the medium to longer term, and we’ve done a lot of work at Petra to make our business more resilient, to ensure that we’re able to generate cash in both good markets and more difficult markets,” Duffy added.

Petra’s historic Cullinan diamond mine is located 100 km north-west of Johannesburg, its Finsch diamond mine is 160 km north-west of Kimberley, and the Williamson mine is 140 km south-west of Mwanza, in Tanzania.

The application of Tracr™ means that the diamonds from these mines will be subjected to the Internet of Things, AI and blockchain technology to provide comprehensive supply transparency.

In addition, the application of Sarine Diamond Journey™ begins with three-dimensional scanning to establish a verifiable image of the physical diamond and a definitive link to its digital report.

This enables the creation of an unbroken chain of authentication at every stage of the diamond’s journey – from rough to rough, rough to polished, polished to report.

Securely stored in the cloud, this data provides the foundation of end-to-end traceability.