New Diamond Technology has produced 5 ct. and 10 ct. man-made diamonds, and it may just be getting started.
First, New Diamond Technology stunned the market with a 5.11 ct. lab-grown diamond. Then it topped that with a 10.02 carater. Recently, it announced a 5 ct. lab-grown blue diamond that will be displayed at Baselworld 2016 .
These diamonds are impressive achievements for a sector in which, until recently, the largest diamond was 3 cts. The quality of the St. Petersburg, Russia–based company’s bread-and-butter production also seems significantly ahead of the competition: It says it’s producing 300 cts. of diamonds a month, mostly in the colorless (D-E-F) range, of VVS1–VS1 clarity, about 1–3 cts. “With regular [mine] production, maybe 2 percent are in the colorless ranges,” says company general director Nikolay Khikhinashvili. “With us, it’s 98 percent.”
In fact, after I first met with NDT, I checked with sources in the lab-grown diamond business to make sure it was for real. But now that both GIA and IGI have vouched that these big stones do exist, that brings up another question: How does it do it?
[two_third]During a visit yesterday to JCK’s offices, Khikhinashvili offered few specifics but noted that the company is constantly improving both “the inside and outside” of its high-pressure high-temperature–based technology, including how it mixes metals into the growing process. Some aspects of its process are patented, he says.[/two_third][one_third_last]
“Their price is about 10 to 20 percent lower than that of naturals.”
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Photo ©courtesy of New Diamond Technology.
