Published: March 18th 2024
Diamond insights from Petra’s diamond expert, Greg Stephenson.
Diamond insights from Petra’s diamond expert, Greg Stephenson
We are starting a new series featuring our senior management team to shed light on their roles and their view on the allure of diamonds.
Today, we introduce our Sales and Marketing Executive @Greg Stephenson, who has over 35 years of experience in the buying and selling of diamonds.
Following our latest tender we sat down with Greg to get the inside scoop.
Greg has led Petra’s Sales team since 2008 and, while we might be biased, our view is that there is nothing he doesn’t know about the industry. Greg has an amazing and infectious passion for diamonds, and today he has provided some of his insights into the industry and Petra’s latest tender.
- What were the highlights of your recent tender?
Look we can’t sugarcoat this, diamond prices have come down in some areas by 30-35% over the last year, albeit from near record highs post COVID, so this will take a while to recover. We are seeing positive signs and, in our recent tender, like-for-like prices have increased by some 4%, so this is all going in the right direction. We just need it to continue but it will also depend on how the majors exercise supply discipline.
We’ve seen some solid demand returning which is great – there were at least 100 companies present at our latest sale – which is a marked improvement on those of 2023.
Overall, the gem quality in this tender was very good and we are seeing some great results come in from Williamson with a few small pinks and a beautiful 62ct white stone that was sold for c.$1million. We also had a lovely blue come in from Cullinan Mine that we will auction separately. The feeling when one of those comes across your desk never gets old.
- Where is the demand?
At our tenders, our Indian clients are the biggest buyers, specifically manufacturing clients rather than dealers; we are also seeing some growth in Israeli clients too.
There are a lot of luxury brands that now have fine jewellery lines, which want to use natural diamonds for their materials, rather than lab-grown. For these, smaller goods are in demand.
In the wider market, the slower recovery is probably lying in the fact that the Chinese economic improvement is yet to come through – despite the news of it picking up. Diamonds tend to track GDP and we do expect a return for diamonds in China, but at the moment gold and pearls are seemingly their thing – pearls are really fashionable at the moment. That being said, we are sure it will return, we just can’t predict when exactly. One thing we do know is that despite being one of the biggest producers of lab-grown, these aren’t desirable to Chinese consumers.
Fortunately, India is growing rapidly, and we are seeing positive signs from the US market as well.
- What makes a Petra tender different from others?
The Petra brand makes us stand out in the industry. It’s a name people buy into which we have cultivated for the past 10–15 years. We have three very distinctive productions from the historical Cullinan Mine, Finsch and Williamson. A key differentiator from other producers is that we never mix our product which helps us reach and meet different types of customers and demand.
Finsch’s gem material is exceptional with about 80% being made up of sawable goods. This means the diamonds emerge with a very distinct octahedron shape and can easily be cut into at least 2 diamonds before being polished with minimal waste.
Cullinan Mine is only 20% sawable, with its goods being mostly makeable which are very popular with the Indian market. We then have the incredible large Type IIa white diamonds that come out of Cullinan Mine, while it also is one of the world’s only sources of blue diamonds.
Williamson is famed for its pink stones and fluorescent goods – these are popular with the manufacturers that can overlook the fluorescence for the smaller jewellery settings. While we haven’t seen any large pinks for a while, these come in all size fractions at Williamson and it’s just a matter of time before they are found.
There is still lots of potential with the Petra brand that we are excited to build on.
- What’s Petra’s positioning on provenance and traceability?
We’ve been talking to Tracr™ and Sarine Technologies for some time – it is all about provenance and traceability going forward. The thing about Petra is that we don’t take third-party goods nor mix our goods – all of our diamonds are laid out mine by mine – we are as transparent as it gets at the upstream level, but providing that for the entire value chain is the next step.
We’ve received the machinery from the Tracr™ and Sarine collaboration and are starting to trial how this works. Every gem and near gem diamond from 0.5 to 10ct plus will go through blockchain, providing consumers with assurance of their ethical purchase from mine to finger.
- What should we be looking out for in the diamond market during 2024?
Everything is moving, it is just all very price-sensitive and ultimately all eyes are on whether the prices will continue to rise and at what pace. The majors held back a lot of inventory last autumn; this isn’t unheard of, but we need to see how they approach the release of this and how it impacts the market.
As I mentioned earlier, big luxury brands are entering the fine jewellery sector which we think will ramp up. Demand for their offering of multi-billion year old gifts of nature as the ultimate luxury continues to grow and we see a continued divergence in the natural and lab grown offering.
Obviously traceability is also a key trend for this year given the G7 sanctions impact. We are currently trialling various technologies and look forward to updating the market with our progress on this.
Discover more about our business model and strategy: petradiamonds.com/about-us/our-strategy-business-model.
