India overtook China to become the second-largest market for diamonds, UK-based diamond firm De Beers Group’s Chief Executive Officer Al Cook said in an interview with Bloomberg. The Chinese luxury market is currently facing a slowdown, he noted.
The CEO of De Beers highlighted that the Indian market is growing at a double-digit rate.
“The good news is that India has taken over where China was, and India is now the second largest market in the world for diamonds, and that’s growing at double-digit rates,” said Cook.
According to a recent Reuters report, India’s cut and polished diamond exports dropped this year due to the fall in demand in the US and China. This has boosted the nation’s domestic market for diamonds.
China faces demand decline
Cook observed that a slowdown in the Asian nation’s economic growth is taking a toll on Chinese luxury sector demand.
“So China’s a really interesting case. I think, across the luxury sector in China, demand has declined as Chinese economic growth has faltered somewhat. Now we see that as a rather longer-term issue,” he said in the interview.
“So the first thing we’ll see is stabilisation of Chinese demand, which is coming through at the moment. That’s an important platform to build on. But quite honestly, we see the growth, the regrowth of Chinese demand being a rather longer-term story,” he stated.
Lab-grown diamonds vs natural diamonds
Cook also addressed the fall in demand for natural diamonds in the United States, stating that the inflow of lab-grown ones reduced demand for them.
“Demand in the United States has been reduced by lab-grown diamonds. So we’ve got to take that on and tell the story of natural diamonds far better than we have,” Cook noted.
According to the De Beers CEO, lab-grown diamonds are made in a microwave and buying them is like buying a poster of the Mona Lisa compared to buying an actual one with a history attached to it.
“You know, lab-grown diamonds. They are their thing, but it’s a little bit like taking a poster, buying a poster of the Mona Lisa and putting it up in an art gallery and telling people it’s the real thing,” said Cook.
“A natural diamond is created over a billion years under the surface of the Earth, whereas a lab-grown is created in a microwave in China in three weeks,” he added.