De Beers Lowers Natural Diamond Production in 2024

Let's follow the diamond production report just released by De Beers and its parent company, Anglo American, as usual.

Note: In this article, "Q" means "quarter", such as Q1 being "first quarter", Q4 being "fourth quarter", and so on.

The total production of rough diamonds in Q1 2024 was 6.863 million carats, a decrease of 23% compared to Q1 2023 and a decrease of 14% compared to Q4 2023.

Compared with the same quarter of last year, among the four major mining countries of De Beers, only Namibia's output slightly increased by 2%, and the other three countries were in decline (Botswana -28%, South Africa -19%, Canada -4%).

However, this does not mean that the demand for natural diamond blanks in the middle of the industry is shrinking. On the contrary, the demand for raw materials is gradually recovering.

In terms of sales, the raw material sales in Q1 2024 were 4.869 million carats, far lower than the 9.694 million carats in Q1 2023. However, there is an objective reason behind this, which is that there were only two sales cycles in Q1 this year, while there were three sales cycles in Q1 last year.

At the same time, compared to the 2.753 million carat sales generated in Q4 2024 (also two sales cycles), the sales in Q1 of this year increased significantly by 77%.

De Beers believes that it is expected that the demand for diamond blanks from midstream customers will gradually increase for the rest of this year.

From the perspective of unit sales price, De Beers adjusted the product portfolio at the first trade fair this year, preferring stones with higher value, thus increasing the unit sales price by 23% to 201 dollars/carat.

2024 Production Guidelines

Given the current situation, De Beers will reduce its annual rough production guidance for 2024 from the original 29 to 32 million carats to 26 to 29 million carats.

Considering the decrease in production, the unit cost in 2024 has been raised from $80/carat to around $90/carat.

图片.png