One of the biggest reveals at this year’s JCK Show wasn’t a new brand or collaboration but something much less glamorous: a new device for jewelry retailers. De Beers raised questions about their plans for the future with the reveal of DiamondProof, their new desktop-sized lab-grown diamond detector.

One of the main features driving lab-grown diamond sales is that, unlike moissanite or cubic zirconia, lab-grown diamonds are chemically identical to mined diamonds. Consumers have picked up on that message and have turned in droves to lab-grown diamonds as a cost-effective alternative to mined diamonds. De Beers wants to end the perception that lab-grown and mined diamonds are indistinguishable with this new countertop detection device.

Lab-Grown Diamonds and Diamond Prices

As we reported in a previous article, diamond prices fell in 2023 after reaching an all-time high in 2022 while lab-grown diamond manufacturers increased both capacity and their market share. The result: plummeting prices for both products, with miners and manufacturers alike searching for a more sustainable business model.

How Diamond Detection Works

It is not easy to definitively tell a mined diamond from a lab-grown diamond. To the untrained eye, they are identical. Not even a gemologist can tell the difference, not even with a loupe or microscope. A spectrograph can measure the levels of nitrogen inside the diamond accurately enough to suggest that a diamond might be a CVD diamond due to higher levels of nitrogen. This kind of testing, however, is not available to all consumers or jewelers.

De Beers already has a machine that can determine whether a diamond came out of a mine or a laboratory. This machine uses fluorescence and phosphorescence to make its determination. Lab-grown diamonds always exhibit fluorescence, but mined diamonds sometimes do. The absence of fluorescence signals a mined diamond, but its presence does not allow one to definitely determine that a diamond is lab-grown. Phosphorescence, on the other hand, is extremely rare in mined diamonds, occurring in some type IIb diamonds. The two factors in combination allow an analyst to fairly certainly determine the origin of a diamond.

While there is little information available on the new DiamondProof diamond detector beyond the company’s JCK presentation, the trademark application De Beers submitted to the UK Intellectual Property Office in June provides some clues. The application describes the product as “An instrument for testing loose diamonds or jewellery containing diamonds to confirm the diamonds subject to testing are natural, and referring any of potential synthetic origin for further testing based on phosphorescence or fluorescence analysis.” In essence, it seems that the device, which De Beers describes as “retail-facing” and “consumer-friendly,” will work just like their SYNTHdetect device.

With the eventual release of De Beers’s tabletop unit, which will retail at about $12,000, De Beers hopes to make this technology more accessible to jewelers everywhere. If they can follow through on this promise, LGD may potentially lose one of its primary advantages: the claim that it is identical to a mined diamond. Jewelers will be able to demonstrate to consumers that while they may be “chemically identical” (“a mineral consisting essentially of pure carbon crystallized in the isometric system,” to quote the FTC’s definition), the conventional consumer wisdom that lab-grown and mined diamonds are the same could be upended.

What This Means for De Beers and Lab-Grown Diamonds

De Beers also announced that they will be converting their growing facility from producing diamonds for jewelry to producing industrial diamonds. When considered alongside the DiamondProof announcement, the two developments seem to indicate a pivot away from lab-grown diamonds as a luxury product, perhaps in an attempt to increase mined diamond prices.

Things won’t change overnight, however. Though De Beers envisions one of their diamond detectors sitting on the counter of every jewelry retailer in the world, the product doesn’t actually exist yet. De Beers’s JCK presentation seems to signal a shift away from lab-grown diamonds, but we can’t say for sure how this will actually affect the market.