diamond news, page-5552

No worries,
DeBeers never had a lot of interest in brown diamonds, their marketing was almost exclusively white.
When Argyle came along the majority of the production was brown so it made sense to try to improve the image/prices.
DeBeers actually tried to negate this by reducing prices on brown goods and deferring sales of Argyle product as they wanted to maintain control of the industry, nearly worked as Argyle came close to closing in the early 90's. Argyle then parted ways with selling to DeBeers and begun selling 100% on the open market, Russia followed suit and Debeers grip on the industry went from over 90% to around 30-40%.
A lot of Indian diamond manufacturers made their fortunes based on small brown Argyle diamonds, average size was less than 0.1ct and the average price around $25/ct.

A stark contrast to Lucapa productions!