There's a $200,000 Diamond-Making Machine on Alibaba — and That Says a Lot About the Industry

In 1948, gem institution De Beers launched a trading run pinch the motto "A gem is forever." Fifty years later, the institution created another campaign justifying the value of diamonds with the slogan, "Isn't 2 months' net a mini value to salary for thing that lasts forever?"

Now, De Beers is aggressively cutting prices to bring income up, and you tin bargain a diamond-making device for $200,000 connected Alibaba.

It's a motion that gem accumulation is democratizing, reports Ars Technica.

In the past 5 years, lab-grown gem income person burgeoned and made the value of mined stones little appealing, according to gem master Paul Zimnisky. The lab-grown gem marketplace was $13 cardinal past twelvemonth and is expected to scope astir $22 cardinal by 2031.

Ankur Daga, CEO of the good jewelry institution Angara, estimated that half of each engagement rings sold this twelvemonth will person lab-grown stones, a important jump from 2% successful 2018.

"The gem manufacture is successful trouble," Daga told CNBC successful June.

As of property time, earthy 1-carat diamonds costs astir $4,000 while lab-grown diamonds of the aforesaid weight spell for astir $620.

How a lab-grown gem instrumentality works

The 44-ton instrumentality uses high-pressure precocious temperature (HPHT) exertion to return a gem seed, aliases a mini gem particle that starts the full process, and toggle shape it into a lab-grown diamond. Alibaba focuses much connected business-to-business products, truthful the instrumentality they person for waste would apt beryllium bought and utilized by a institution pinch specialized knowledge.

Related: She Started a Business With $2,000 of Personal Savings — Then Grew It to More Than $100 Million Revenue

Lab-grown diamonds are up to 90% little costly than earthy diamonds and look exactly the same to the quality eye. They tin only beryllium told isolated pinch typical instrumentality successful a professional gemological lab.

They besides don't transportation the aforesaid environmental and societal concerns arsenic people recovered diamonds, which person to beryllium mined successful unsafe conditions.

Even pinch this benignant of growth, and machines for illustration the 1 sold done Alibaba, Zimnisky says that naturally-found diamonds will still person a spot successful the future.

"Human desire for uncommon and valuable objects runs beautiful heavy wrong us," Zimnisky told NPR. "I don't deliberation that's going to, each of a sudden, change."

Related: This Family-Owned Manhattan Jewelry Shop Struggled to Rebuild After 9/11. Today, 2 Sisters Who Run the 46-Year-Old Business Reveal What It Takes to Persevere.