The conference will try to address the changing industry dynamics of the diamond industry across the world, paying careful attention to the African diamond producing countries. The conference will try to address the changing industry dynamics of the diamond industry across the world, paying careful attention to the African diamond producing countries.
Two developments which stand to have an impact on the world diamond market will be highlighted at the Fourth Antwerp Diamond Conference, scheduled to take place on October 15 and 16.
The governments of Southern African diamond producing nations are insistent on their country’s capturing the major share of the value chain, which would be a momentous shift from the historically accepted distribution pattern.
This insistence, along with the impending opening of the giant DTC Botswana rough diamond sorting facility in Gaborone in 2008, will definitely have a significant effect on the market.
“We are entering the beginning of a process that we know will change the way the diamond industry has operated for more than a century, but there a real questions about the degree of change and how it will affect the business and the diamond market” claims Fredy J.
Hanard, CEO of the Antwerp World Diamond Center which is the organizer of the Antwerp Diamond Conference. “These changes are forcing members of the industry to question how and where they will obtain rough supply in the future, and where they will process the diamonds. All these issues will be addressed at the conference in Antwerp.”
As Botswana, South Africa, and Namibia, as well as Angola, supply more than 50 percent of the annual flow of rough diamonds into the pipeline, these countrys’ respective governments firmly believe that this change is of economic and political importance to them.
The region’s growth and development is dependant on this crucial change being implemented. Government officials of these nations have asserted on several occasions that they were no longer willing to accept a situation in which Africa operates exclusively as a supplier of raw materials, while the higher value-added stages of distribution took place elsewhere.
The concerned nations have already rewritten a legislation which mandates that local cutting industries get first pickings on domestic production, and that levies be imposed on rough exports. This new legislation has seen a significant increase in large diamond companies which have set up cutting plants in the region.
De Beers’ huge DTC Botswana facility, under construction in Gabarone, will take on the responsibility of sorting and distributing all the company’s South African production, a role traditionally played by Diamond Trading Company in London. This nascent African venture will, however, have to compete with India and China which currently have far more financial backing and infrastructure.
The 2007 Antwerp Conference, entitled “Producers in Transition: The Changing Industry Dynamic”, will host an array of speakers which includes high ranking government officials from the South African nations concerned, as well as heads of major diamond mining producers, among others.
Professor Joseph Steglitz, former head of US President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, and the co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, will provide a neutral overview of the situation.