CaratDe Beers and Shanghai's bourse meet on natural-diamond value
The Natural Diamond Council and the Diamond Federation of Hong Kong convened the session on 17 September, during Jewellery & Gem World. The World Federation of Diamond Bourses and De Beers sat on the panel; no figures were released.
Five bodies met in Hong Kong. The Natural Diamond Council and the Diamond Federation of Hong Kong convened a forum on rebuilding natural-diamond value. The Shanghai Diamond Exchange, the World Federation of Diamond Bourses and De Beers joined them.
If you sell natural stones: The category's marketing bodies are coordinating the message, not the price. Nothing was announced.
If you watch China: The Shanghai exchange named retail partnership as its next step, extending a 2024 agreement.
What this is not: A supply or pricing decision. No volume, price or budget figure was released.
| Organisation | Represented by | Role in the session |
|---|---|---|
| Diamond Federation of Hong Kong | Founding chairman | Opening address, roundtable chair |
| Shanghai Diamond Exchange | President | Keynote, China trading hub |
| Natural Diamond Council | Amber Pepper, chief executive | Keynote, global strategy |
| World Federation of Diamond Bourses | Mehul Shah, president | Keynote, global trading |
| De Beers Group | Vice-president, global sightholders | Roundtable panellist |
ISupply is the stated premise
Falling supply framed it. The Natural Diamond Council's chief executive said natural-diamond supply is declining, and that buyers now decide more cautiously and with more information.
The ask is education. She put the category's task as consumer education on natural origin, rarity and long-term value, rather than on marriage and status alone.
IIChina gets its own plan
Three themes, two levers. The council's Greater China managing director described three communication priorities and two collaboration drivers as the 2026 plan for that market.
Retail is the end. The Shanghai Diamond Exchange said its partnership with the council, running since 2024, now reaches from consumer campaigns through to shop counters.
IIISeparating natural from synthetic
Bourses want a line. The World Federation of Diamond Bourses' president argued for traceability from mine to counter, and for a clear separation between natural and synthetic stones.
No number was given. No participant published a volume, a price, a budget or a date, and none is reported here.
01What would change this call+
A published figure. Everything here is positioning, and a single dated number from the council or the exchange, a campaign budget, a reach count or a China sell-through figure, would move this from a messaging story to a measurable one.
02What these five bodies each control+
The Natural Diamond Council is a marketing body funded by producers; it buys advertising and writes category messaging, and it does not set prices or supply. The Diamond Federation of Hong Kong is the local trade association and the host. The Shanghai Diamond Exchange is the only legal channel for diamond import into mainland China and therefore sees the volume that a marketing body does not. The World Federation of Diamond Bourses is the umbrella for the world's trading floors and writes the rules those floors trade under. De Beers sells rough to a fixed list of buyers. Only two of the five can move a number, and neither of them published one.
03Method · the desk’s arithmetic+
The Hong Kong Commercial Daily report was fetched directly on 21 September 2026 and read in the original Chinese, not through a syndication or a summary. Its own byline date is 2026-09-19 14:15:56 and the body's dateline is 17 September, a two-day gap between the event and the report which is stated rather than collapsed. The organisations, the speakers' roles and the session structure are all taken from that body text. No quotation is printed. The remarks in the report are rendered in Chinese, and at least two of the speakers gave them in English, so any quotation here would be a translation of a translation; the substance is paraphrased and attributed instead, which is the safer of the two under the house rule on quotes. Four of the six speakers are named only in Chinese characters; their roles are printed rather than a transliteration this paper cannot source. No second outlet carrying this event was found in a general web search, which is disclosed as a limit on the method rather than presented as exclusivity. ARCHIVE: the Natural Diamond Council and the Diamond Federation of Hong Kong - greps of the built archive returned zero hits for 'Hong Kong Diamond Federation' and 'Diamond Federation of Hong Kong', and nine hits for 'natural diamond council', each read and none concerning a Hong Kong forum. The nearest archived item is 2026-09-19, Botswana's vice-president on lab-grown and De Beers, which is a government statement at Chatham House on 17 September rather than a trade forum in Hong Kong. DIFFERENT EVENT, DIFFERENT PARTIES, SAME WEEK. NEW.
Rings.com puts the lab-grown 1-carat median back at $571
The lab-grown counter this category is answering, priced this morning.
The trade, filed before the New York open.
Prices, tenders and the one story that moved the industry overnight. Ninety seconds.
Subscribe free →