Rough and polished, natural and mined, priced sight by sight. The diamond desk follows the pipeline end to end — producer sales in Gaborone, tenders in Antwerp and Dubai, manufacturing in Surat, memo programs in New York — and publishes the prices the trade actually deals at.
De Beers-style supply discipline is back: allocations trimmed, prices defended. Polished has stabilized after two brutal years — the question is whether midstream margins recover before credit patience runs out.
With lab-grown 1ct goods under $750, natural sellers have stopped competing on price and started competing on account of provenance, rarity and resale. Watch the marketing budgets, not the price lists.
Origin platforms are no longer CSR decoration — G7 rules and retailer mandates are making sourcing paperwork a condition of sale. Compliant goods are starting to command a measurable premium.
De Beers' ten-times-a-year allocation sale, where approved buyers — sightholders — purchase rough in pre-assembled boxes at prices set by the producer. Refusing a box has consequences; so does needing one.
Carat, color, clarity, cut set the grade — but the trade increasingly prices a fifth C: certainty of origin. Two identical stones can part ways on price over a paper trail.
Miners set rough prices, retailers set polished prices, and the cutters and traders in between absorb the difference. When both ends tighten at once, Surat and Antwerp bleed first — the industry's recurring crisis.
Goods consigned to retailers on memorandum — sold before they're paid for. Memo keeps counters full and balance sheets fragile; its terms are one of the best barometers of trade confidence.
Rapaport's report of 6 September 2026, 14:15 UTC, of HRD Antwerp's announcement: the renovated laboratory in Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex can grade up to 2,000 diamonds daily, a 30% increase in capacity, with 40 new full-time employees recruited. The Indian branch generates 59% of HRD Antwerp's total group revenue and is forecast to grow 15% this year against 13% for the group, and the company attributes as much as 47% of its total revenue increase to jewellery grading. Belgium's prime minister Bart De Wever toured the office during the same Mumbai visit that took him to the Bharat Diamond Bourse. No investment figure, floor area or graded volume was published.
Read on 7 September 2026, Rapaport's index page carries a dated level for every day of a trailing 30-day window, 8 August to 6 September, for the 0.30, 0.50, 1, 2 and 3-carat series, where it published monthly points a week earlier. Levels at 6 September: 0.30-carat $935.10, 0.50-carat $1,287.73, 1-carat $3,901.76, 2-carat $10,630.33, 3-carat $17,881.15. Across the window the 0.50-carat gained 2.38%, the 0.30-carat 1.80%, the 1-carat 0.59% and the 3-carat 0.14%, while the 2-carat fell 0.25%, the only size lower. Each figure is Carat Capital's first-to-last computation and reconciles with the page's own printed change for that size.
RTBF's report of 4 September 2026 attributes to the AWDC a 2025 Antwerp total of $19.1 billion of imports and exports combined, $19 billion of it natural rough and polished, and quotes AWDC spokesperson Ine Tassignon that the trade has lost 30% of the volume and the value once exchanged in Antwerp. Koen Vandenbempt of the University of Antwerp puts the share of world rough cut in India at 90% to 95%. More than 55% of the polished leaving Antwerp goes to the United States. In the same week GJEPC recorded the first visit by a Belgian prime minister to the Bharat Diamond Bourse, putting India-Belgium gem and jewellery trade at $3.5 billion in 2025-26. No instrument was concluded.
JCK's report of 4 September 2026 numbers at eight the plan Penny set out on the opening day of CIBJO's centenary congress in Vicenza, which runs 4 to 7 September. Five of the eight concern what the trade says about its product; the eighth asks De Beers to lead beyond its own business. Penny is the former group chief executive of De Beers, chairman of the board of Ninety One, and leads the consortium Anglo American picked in July to buy the diamond company at a price Bloomberg put near $1 billion, roughly $750 million on closing. CIBJO's own release presents the same material as an unnumbered run of priorities, so the count of eight is JCK's. No spend, date or funder is attached to the plan.
Rapaport published its August price release in New York on 2 September 2026 at 08:21 UTC. The Rapaport Trade Diamond Index for 1-carat round D-H, IF-VS2 goods rose 0.5% across the month, described by Rapaport as its first increase in fifteen months after readings flat or negative back to May 2025. The 0.30-carat index rose 2%, the 0.50-carat 2.5%, and the 3-carat fell 0.4% having been steady for a year and a half. Compounded with July's figures as this paper reported them on 4 August (1-carat flat, 0.30-carat +1.6%, 0.50-carat +1.8%, 3-carat +0.2%), the two-month change is 0.30-carat +3.63%, 0.50-carat +4.35%, 1-carat +0.50%, 3-carat -0.20%, a spread of 4.55 percentage points best size to worst. Rapaport attributes the recovery to production cuts by miners and manufacturers, resumed Indian shipments to the US after July's confirmation of a 10% tariff rate, brisk trade at IIJS Mumbai, and falling inventory plus consumers cooling on lab-grown goods in the 1-1.49-carat band. Antwerp and Israel seasonally quiet; China slow ahead of the September Hong Kong fair. This paper's tape carries the RAPI 1.00ct level at 3,881.34, a provisional July 2026 point that does not yet carry August's move.
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