Alberto Calderon, president of BHP Billiton’s Diamond and Specialty Products agrees with De Beers’ projection that the gap between rough diamond supplies and demand for polished diamonds will widen over the next ten years. The gaps results on the one hand due to the success of De Beers’ marketing efforts, and on the other hand, by the small number of new diamond sources to replace the dwindling diamond production at mature diamond-mining operations.
BHP Billiton, the world’s largest resource company, estimates that supplies of synthetic diamonds will grow to five percent of the world’s market production but that will still not be enough to fill the gap between supply and demand. BHP Billiton sees synthetic diamonds as being another source of diamond for the world markets in future years but they see plenty of demand for their natural diamond production. They have an 80% stake in the Ekati diamond mine in Canada and are developing joint ventures in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
For the diamond industry, the strategy is to be aggressive on growing demand and supply because as long as demand grows faster than demand, the industry is a big winner.
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