Sello Motseta
20th September 2025
The De Beers Group will open about 100 FOREVERMARK stores in India over the next 7 years which accounts for about 10% global demand with confidence rising that natural diamond sales will rebound despite the persisting uncertainty around US tariffs on Indian exports.
It follows on from the signing of the Luanda Accord with Angola’s two leading state-owned diamond institutions, ENDIAMA E.P. and SODIAM E.P., joining the Natural Diamond Council (NDC), effective July 1, 2025. Angola had irked industry players by flooding market with cheap diamonds.
Participating producer governments and De Beers Group intend to allocate 1% of the annual revenue they generate from rough diamond sales to fund this initiative. These funds will be entrusted to the NDC to execute a global category marketing approach.
Niranjan Mylvaganam, Chief Finance Officer(CFO) for Diamond Trading for De Beers Group, said “Angola was pushing out large volumes of natural diamonds at lower prices than other players in the industry. It was having negative implications for the industry.”
He said, “We believe natural diamonds represent more than beautiful gemstones; They can help fuel nations, empower communities, support livelihoods and champion conservation efforts. Building Forever is our commitment to creating a lasting positive legacy, beyond the last diamond mined.”
The Natural Diamond Council(NDC) will also launch its Hero Advertising Campaign during November to coincide with the peak holiday season to bolster the appeal of natural diamonds as stakeholders amplify efforts to grow alure of natural diamonds and galvanize slow growth of global sales.
“The upsurge of synthetic diamonds especially over the last three years, is a result of a perfect storm: Retailers buying into the short term high margins of lab grown diamonds coupled with generic marketing funding for natural diamonds being drastically reduced(as of 2022 when the Russia-Ukraine war started),” said Kristina Buckley Kayel, Manging Director and Chief marketing Officer for the Natural Diamond Council(NDC), North America.
She said, “So synthetic diamonds subsequently flooded the market while generic natural diamonds marketing trickled. In the US market, comprising over 50% of global diamond demand, selling the ‘bigger look for less,’ was too easy for sales associates.”
This happened at the cost of not sufficiently differentiating the natural diamonds from synthetic diamonds, causing cannibalization particularly with engagement ring sales and consumers not fully appreciating the unique value proposition of natural diamonds.
Kayel believes the tipping point has passed with lab grown diamonds prices dropping close to 90% and retailers feeling the squeeze of unsustainable business model
“The urgency for augmenting natural diamond desirability broadly among the end consumer, namely the pre-engaged 21-35 year old audience. The recent signing of the Luanda Accord to commit and centralize marketing funds through the NDC is progress towards turning up the volume on promotion of the unique values of natural diamonds,” said Kayel.
There remains a lot of uncertainty about the implications of US tariffs on natural diamond sales and the US governments position on the matter especially because the US does not produce rough diamonds and so it is not clear that the current administration is protecting US businesses.
The US Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit declared tariffs to be unlawful by 7 votes to 4 but has put ruling on hold until at least October 14th to allow for Trump administration to take case to the US Supreme Court. Arguments are set to be heard during the first week of September.
