CaratNot lab-grown, synthetic: CIBJO moves to redraw the label
The confederation expects to strike "laboratory-grown" and "laboratory-created" from its Blue Book at a September 4 congress and mandate "synthetic" instead, joining Russia, India, the African producers and the GIA in a coordinated tightening of language.
§1One word, by decree.
The word on the tag is about to change. CIBJO, the world jewelry confederation, expects to remove "laboratory-grown" and "laboratory-created" from its Blue Book and require the single term "synthetic" for man-made gemstones, with a formal decision due at its congress on September 4. The body concluded the older phrasing described the product poorly, and that a plainer word serves the shopper better.
Charles Abouchar, who heads CIBJO's colored-stone commission, framed the aim as "protecting consumer confidence through the adoption of clear and descriptive language." The confederation's own definition does the heavy lifting: a synthetic is an artificial product with essentially the same chemical composition, physical properties and structure as its natural counterpart. That is precisely the claim lab-grown marketers have leaned on, now recast in a word the trade has historically used to mean cheaper.
§2A coordinated push.
CIBJO is not moving alone. Russia ordered lab-grown jewelry labeled "synthetic" from September 1, the African Diamond Producers Association made the same call in May, India's Bureau of Indian Standards issued standardized terminology, and the GIA updated its own terms in 2025. Read together, the moves are a natural-diamond counteroffensive fought on the dictionary rather than the price list, aimed at stripping the borrowed romance out of a category whose wholesale prices have fallen about 96% since 2018.
That is precisely the claim lab-grown marketers have leaned on, now recast in a word the trade has historically used to mean cheaper.
§3What it costs the counter.
For retailers the change is not cosmetic. A sales associate who has spent three years teaching customers to say "lab-grown" now has to unlearn it, and a word that markets a product as modern and guilt-free becomes a word that markets it as manufactured. The stakes are largest for the brands that built their pitch on the friendlier phrase, and smallest for the naturals houses that lobbied for the harder one.
Language is the cheapest lever in this trade and the slowest to move, which is exactly why the naturals side is pulling it now. Call a stone synthetic often enough and the market stops arguing about whether it is a diamond,
and that argument, not the carat price, is the one that has always been worth winning.
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