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Firm Launches Japan’s First Synthetics Production
Sep 2, 2018 6:53 AM
By Joshua Freedman
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RAPAPORT... A Japanese company claims to be the nation’s first producer
of gem-quality lab-grown diamonds, aiming for an initial annual output of 24,000
carats.
Tokyo-based Pure Diamond Co. launched in July as a spin-off
from a producer of synthetic diamonds for industrial purposes. It plans to
begin by selling its stones to Japanese wholesalers and retailers, before
moving directly into the retail and e-commerce sector in a later phrase. It
will use other synthetics suppliers’ prices as its benchmark, Takuya Ito, the
managing director of Pure Diamond, told Rapaport News last week.
“If market demand will increase, we can expand our
capability,” Ito said.
The company is launching a cryptocurrency, Pure Diamond
Coin, to fund production equipment and research and development. The pre-sale
of tokens launched on Saturday. It is also using blockchain technology to
provide consumers with information on the diamonds’ provenance and
characteristics. The firm’s chief technology officer, Junma Kawasaki, was the
“white-hat” hacker — the term for a computer specialist who tests the security
of networks — responsible for solving the January theft of $500 million in
digital money from Coincheck, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, it claimed.
Pure Diamond’s technology, including the blockchain, will
ensure its lab-grown diamonds are traceable and remain separate from natural
stones in the supply chain, Ito added.
While the scale of the world’s synthetics production is
unclear, China is currently thought to be the largest grower of diamonds. The
global market is about 3% to 4% of the size of the natural sector, for which
global rough production is approximately 150 million carats, De Beers chief
financial officer Nimesh Patel estimated in an interview with Rapaport News last month.
Image: Kim Alaniz
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Tags:
Coincheck, De Beers, Joshua Freedman, Junma Kawasaki, Nimesh Patel, Pure Diamond, Pure Diamond Coin, Rapaport News, Synthetics, Takuya Ito
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