What are Top Gem Diamonds Producing Countries?

The major proportion of the natural gem-quality diamonds of the world are mined in such countries where people do not buy much of the diamond jewellery. Major consumers of diamond jewelry are the United States, Indian, China, the European Union, Japanese, Hong Kong, and Middle East.

More than 40 per cent of diamond jewelry in the world is consumed by the United States. The other regions in the list consume another 40 percent of the world diamond jewelry. However, all these regions are not even remotely significant in terms of the natural gem-quality diamond mining.

The place where the diamonds are going to be mined?

Africa is the source of most of the world stockpiles of gem quality diamonds since the 1870s. The above map of diamond production indicates countries which have produced at least 100,000 carats of natural gem-quality diamond output.

The map proves that the past decades saw popularization of diamond production all over the world. The diamonds in Russia and Canada have been developed very quickly and these are countries that are producing more than half of the world diamonds. But the heart of the natural gem quality diamond production still stays in Africa.

The Forefront of Diamond Manufacturers

Diamonds that are of gem-quality in seven countries are the world leaders in the production of the gem-quality diamond in the past decade. Russia, Botswana, Canada, Angola, South Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Namibia have been steadily on the production of more than one million carats annually. They have had relatively the same performance and dominance, which can be evidenced in the following graph.
Other than the major producers, there are hundreds of countries that produce less than one million carats each year, but routinely appear year after year. They are: Guinea, Lesotho, Sierra leone and Zimbabwe.

They both produce more than 100,000 carats of quality diamonds per annum; and have averaged at least that same amount within the last ten years. It is produced in the smaller mechanized mines, or a large population of artisanal workers in alluvial deposits. The production under recent times may be observed in the following table.

One of the most famous producers of diamonds based on the weight of its carats in the world was the Argyle Mine of Australia. It yielded mammoth quantities of brown diamonds.

Russia

Russia has served as the location of diamonds as early as the 18 th century. The major production was accomplished in 1957 by the Mir kimberlite pipe and neighboring placers. Since that time many diamondiferous pipes and alluvial deposits have been discovered. Russia Open-pit mines at the Mir and Udachnaya pipes in the Siberian Republic of Sakha produced most of its diamond production so far.

Russia is the current world leading producer of gemquality diamonds based on carat weight, and this has been the case since a decade now. The only other country which has a greater production value is Botswana but this is due to its production giving it a higher percentage of large and high quality diamonds.

A Russian diamond mining company group almost entirely percent of the diamonds mined in Russia at the company called ALROSA. ALROSA grades and tends to sell its rough diamonds to various polished diamond producers, majority of them in Russia, Belgium, India, Israel, Hong Kong, and China. A majority of sales occur on the basis of long-term supply agreements, although one-off sales are also part of the company and it is currently also developing ways of selling online.

The main regulator of ALROSA includes the Russian government agencies. The Russian Federation Agency for Management of State Property – wast this share is about 44%; the Republic of Sakha has the Ministry of Property and Land Relations amounting to about 25%; and the municipal district administrations of the Republic of Sakha amounting to about 8%. The rest which is about 23 percent belongs to individuals and legal entities.

Botswana

Bulk testing and indicator mineral mapping of Botswana was among the pioneer places where bulk sampling and indicator mineral maps were applied in order to characterize and locate diamond pipes in a geographic wide to difficult area. Diamond hunting started in the 1950s and diamond mining started in 1971. By the mid-1980s Botswana saw some of the most productive mines in the world and the small nation was ranked among the top producers of diamonds across the world.
Since more than ten years, Botswana has been the second major diamond producer based on carat weight and the top producer based on value. It takes this position due to the fact that its average diamond size is big as compared to what is produced by Russia and of more or less a general higher quality.

Jwaneng mine in Botswana is commonly known as the wealthiest diamond mine in the world. The mine has been yielding approximately 10 million carats of high grade diamonds yearly. The government of Botswana and De Beers collapsed into a joint venture which is called Debswana, hence we find the company that owns the mine bearing this name.

Diamond industry plays the most significant role in Botswana economic performance. Around 60 percent of the export of Botswana and 25 percent of its gross domestic product come in form of diamonds. All the rough of Debswana is sold by De Beers and it has constructed the biggest diamond sorting and selling abilities in the whole world in Gaborone, the commonplace and most bigger town of Botswana. There the stones which have been mined by De Beers in Botswana, Canada, Namibia and South Africa are screened and made available to diamond consumers and producers all over the globe in De Beers popular sightholder sales.

Canada

The big surprise diamond industry has been located in Canada. It is believed that the geologists did know that gem-bearing diamond pipes cut through the Canadian Shield rocks and yet a great number of the world-wisest diamond hunters missed them. This was followed by the discovery of evidence of diamond filled kimberlites pipes in the year 1991 in the Northwest Territories and near Yellowknife by two geologists, Chuck Fipke and Stewart Blusson, who were some 200 miles above the Yellow knives. This was a commercial deposit and mining has commenced in 1998. Some other mines were already commissioned in quick succession thereby making Canada to become one of the top producers of diamonds worldwide.

Already some of Canada mines have been shut down due to hard mining conditions or working out of ore bodies. This has however not undermined the position of the country as the third-leading diamond producer in the world. Majority of mines in Canada are situated in distant and cold areas in Northern Canada. Others just get their heavy supplies via trucks along ice roads which can just be crossed in the coldest months of the year. The mines will also require to have all the facilities necessary to accommodate and feed the workers over several months. The challenges have seen the mines succeed even though they are expensive.

The consumers have been dicey with Canadian diamonds. Others feel like them due to the fact that they are made without conflicts in the areas where laborers earn good salaries and rules guard and secure the environment. In Canada, the skill of the diamond and jewelry manufacturers has given rise to social differentiation of identity through establishment of the national origin on the girdles of the trade logos and the certificate numbers. It can be a maple leaf, polar bear, CanadaMark symbols or words Ice on fire. These inscriptions provide guarantees to the consumer that the diamond is genuine and that it is linked to a certificate and this has proved very useful as a marketing tool.

Angola

Angola started mining diamond more than 100 years ago when it was still under Portuguese rule. The first mining was done in the numerous alluvial deposits in the country and the diamonds were transported to Europe by the Portuguese traders. Angola has been ranked among the top producers of diamonds in the world in terms of value and volume in the dollar value in the past more than 10 years. Alluvial diamond mining is not of less importance, and the experiences of a number of diamond pipes discovered and developed will make hard rock mining a significant producer in the Angolan output.

A mine worth mentioning is Lulo Mine owned by Lucapa Diamond Company. It is an alluvial mine which has rendered some of the biggest type IIa diamonds of the world. The Type IIa diamonds are usually of color since there is practically no nitrogen to replace the carbon content in the crystal lattice. Diamonds in Lulo have an appealing color of pink – which is one of the most preferred colors of diamonds (type IIa). The pink diamonds with large colorless ones having an aesthetically appealing look to them make the Lulo production quite valuable.

South Africa
The modern diamond industry is achievable because it was born in South Africa. This happened during 1870s when mining started in some diamond pipes around the town of Kimberley. Diamonds until that time were nearly all extracted, mostly in an artisanal way, out of unconsolidated sediments. Linked with this is South Africa that was the bottleneck supplier of gem-quality diamonds immediately and kept the lead until the 1920s end when this position was taken over by the growth of production in Democratic Republic of Congo to make that nation the top-ranking diamond producer nation.

South Africa has been a steady producer and now mines some few million carats of gem quality diamonds annually. Part of this production can be attributed to the diamond pipes which started their production in the 1800s. These originated as hand workings in the ground and weathered rock above a diamond pipe, then open-pit mines, which dug down to bring out the kimberlite, then underground mines as open-pin mining became too expensive.

South Africa is still mining diamonds in pipes and alluvial deposits in the country. The country also mines diamond along its coastal line. Millions of years ago, erosion took away the diamonds out of the interior land and received the rivers in reservoirs, and their presence dropped on the beaches with the sandy sediments. The same diamonds now are being mined off shore of South Africa and even off the coast of Namibia they have been carried by the strong longshore currents and wave action

Namibia

In 1908 diamonds began to be mined in Namibia when a railroad worker discovered a small diamond in a sand desert deposit. The finding started a diamond rush and a wide range of alluvial diamond mining. The diamonds were scattered by deposits of huge quantities of dispersed sedimental material. Miners became innovative to come up with screening and jigging machines that helped them to sort through gigantic quantities of alluvial material, quickly picking up the diamonds.

Another kind of diamond deposit was discovered after World war I that is, the raised beach deposits on the Atlantic coast. This can also be mined effectively by the method established in the alluvial deposits of applying screening and jigging equipment to the deposits. Since their discovery, the mines have continually been exploited, and majority of the commercial diamonds that have been produced in Namibia to-date were extracted in these mines. The miners were forced to tap the ocean floor whereby methods to do this were developed as the deposits were mined to the coast line.

Diamonds are extracted off shore nowadays in the exclusive economic zone of Namibia in water depths exceeding 140 meters. The practice has turned Namibia into the largest undersea miners across the globe. The quality of the diamonds extracted in these deposits is of extraordinary quality. They are eroded of their source rock in the hinterland of the African continent, sent through rivers and piled in the Atlantic Ocean, and subsequently carried by waves and longshore currents along the African region. They withstand all this transportation in an amazing condition due to being hard and tough. Sliced and thickly embedded diamonds are weaker to the long-distance transport. Consequently, most of the diamonds extracted along the coast of Namibia come out as gemstones with very high average carat value.

Currently the Namdeb Diamond Corporation is the company that carries out most of the diamond mining activities in Namibia being a partnership operation owned by the Government of the Republic of Namibia in equal shares with the The De Beers Group of Companies.

Australia

In 1981 Australia began commercial production and within a short span of time it was the leading producer of gem quality diamonds. Australia is another country whose production has drastically declined in the past years because the deposits have run out and have not been adequately replaced. Rio Tinto commissioned the new Argyle underground diamond mine in Western Australia, in 2013. Since 1983 the open-pit mine at Argyle had been a consistent producer of diamonds, and produced the largest percentage of natural fancy-colored diamonds in the world. The underground mine has prolonged the life of Argyle till 2020.

Production of diamonds in the US

Though the United States is the biggest consumer of the gem-quality diamonds, it does not produce any commercial mine. The Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas is the currentl only place in the United States producing gem-quality diamond, which tourists can prospect at a small fee and keep whatever they get. The park will generate a couple of hundred carats in a very good year. This domestic deficiency in production needs the United States to receive nearly all the consumptions in diamonds.

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, 2024
Note: Figures represent production of rough, gem-quality diamonds in thousand carats for the year 2023.

Manufacture of synthetic diamond

According to the report given by the United States Geological Survey, in the year 2015, the United States produced an estimated amount of gem-quality diamonds valued at 52.4 million dollars within its laboratories. There is also production of an unknown quantity in non- United States laboratories. Majority of these synthetic diamonds are finding their way to the gemstone market and at the point of consumer sale, they are declared as “lab-created,” or “lab grown” or “synthetic.” When this happens these man made diamonds tend to be sold at lower prices and this is at least 25 percent lower than what the natural diamonds would cost at the same size and quality.

The synthetics are very hard and very expensive to differentiate with the natural diamonds particularly on the wholesale level when the synthetics are inserted into enormous lots of very tiny diamonds. This influx of artificial stones in the inventory of the natural stones has raised alarms in the gem and jewelry business and also the customers. Is my diamond natural?

The supply of the lab-created diamonds is not big and hence most consumers are still purchasing the natural diamonds. Nevertheless, some consumers are induced by a low selling price of the lab-created diamond since it contains the same chemical element, same physical properties and to the eye it looks as genuine as natural diamonds.

This is something the time will have to reveal about how committed the buyers will be when dealing with natural diamond and how much will they be willing to layoff the discount.