According to Diamond Investing News, Investment in Diamonds is growing as precious metals struggle to maintain their price or even rise.
The Economic Times has reported that dispite the drop in the price of gold the continues weak rupee has prevented jewelers from lowering their price for gold jewelery. The rresult being that the push is now on for more sales of diamond jewelry that contains less gold.
As quoted in the market news:
Several jewellers, including Gitanjali, Orra, C Krishnaiah Chetty and Popley & Sons, say they plan to hard sell diamond jewellery and innovative products that will ensure value addition of 25-30%. Although this may hurt sales to an extent, the change in strategy is attractive as the margins in gold are much lower – about 6-14%, the jewellers said.
‘As a jeweller we do not want to lose customers. So we have decided to push diamond jewellery with less gold content and also offering entry level products which have low labour charge. So we are reorienting business strategy for the time being to survive,’ said Rajiv Popley, director of Mumbai-based Popley & Sons.
And Matt Manson, president and CEO of Stornoway Diamond (TSX:SWY), told Kitco News in an interview recently, “We’re right on the cusp of this developing,” referring to the increase in diamond investment.
“The target in the future is to have 15-20% of world diamond demand be people purchasing diamonds for just this purpose, for physical diamonds as an investment vehicle. People have been trying to look for the mechanism to create diamond investment vehicles and right now it looks like the moment for doing this. This is one of the big themes in the diamond business right now,” he emphasized.
Similarly, Rob Burton, director of bespoke jewelry store Platlandia, recently told Mining Weekly that investment diamonds — described as those over 3 carats — were able to withstand the economic downturn of 2008 and are a good choice in the current market.
“There is currently no limit to the price of diamonds between 10 ct and 40 ct. A 3 ct diamond has increased 145% in price since 2008 and 5 ct diamonds increased by 174% in price between 1999 and 2011,” he commented. As a result, “[t]he margins are there and so are the investment opportunities for the consumer.”
More information on investing with diamonds is available at Investing in Diamonds through a diamond ETF
