JOHANNESBURG: In a bid to keep the shine on struggling natural diamond sales, industry giant De Beers has launched a verification device to differentiate natural gems from their laboratory-grown competitors, the company announced on Monday.

The “DiamondProof” device is meant to confirm authenticity of precious stones “formed deep within the Earth billions of years ago”, De Beers said in a press release, at a time when the industry faces strong competition and plummeting prices.

A black scanner-like machine available at retailers in the US, it detects “the distinct chemical compositions of natural diamonds”, De Beers said. “The natural diamond industry is in a constant effort to create separation from lab-grown” gems, which are cheaper and only take a few weeks to be produced, diamond industry analyst Edahn Golan said.

The launch “is part of a wider effort in the diamond industry to pull itself by the bootstraps” through marketing, pricing and consumer education, Golan said. Diamond sales have struggled to recover since the Covid-19 pandemic, facing a downturn in consumer spending, particularly in China.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2025