Throughout history, diamonds have been admired by the powerful and have become symbols of power, rarity and eternity. Crowned heads, stars or simply lovers have been showing off their precious stones since the dawn of time.
For some years, synthetic diamonds, identical in every way to diamonds extracted from mines, have been shaking up the traditional diamond sector.
The ethical duel between natural and synthetic diamonds has only just begun. Between the extraction of one and the production of the other, the two camps are clashing. On the one hand, a ton of ore has to be extracted to obtain 1 carat, while on the other, reactors have to be heated to 5,500°C for three to four weeks to produce a diamond.
Synthetic diamonds are becoming popular with the younger generations as they represent an ethical and ecological alternative to natural diamonds.
In the Luxology podcast dedicated to this topic, Manuel Mallen, Founder and CEO of Maison Courbet, shares a few facts:
- There are more diamonds on land than underground
- Mined diamonds are anything but rare. Approximately 150 million carats are extracted from mines each year, of which the jewellery and the industrial sectors use half each
- Laboratory diamonds are 3 x more expensive to produce but 30% cheaper to sell because there are only 2 to 3 intermediaries compared to 10 to 14 for natural diamonds
- Only coloured and large natural diamonds are valuable
- Creating laboratory diamonds is very energy intensive, but they can be produced with renewable energy and do not have the social and environmental impacts associated with natural diamond mining
- Today 50 mines produce 90% of all diamonds extracted worldwide
- Producing large, pure synthetic diamonds is complex and expensive
Synthetic diamonds will undoubtedly shake up the jewellery market in a positive way: with the arrival of this new offer, natural diamonds will have to prove their ethical and environmental credentials.
