The US jewelry enterprises accelerated their closure, and Botswana Diamond Company suspended the auction of rough products

Today, I will share two pieces of information from the natural diamond industry, which may be slightly negative, but do reflect the current situation of the international diamond industry. Fortunately, we did not find too many negative emotions in the original report. The industry is adjusting its supply and demand relationship with a positive attitude, preparing for future market recovery. US jewelry companies are accelerating their closure

According to reports from JBT (Jewelers Board of Trade), American jewelry companies are experiencing an "accelerated shutdown process". As of September 30th, 179 companies closed in the third quarter of this year, compared to 160 in the same period last year.

Among those companies that closed down, 22 were closed due to mergers and acquisitions, while 147 were closed due to "other reasons". JBT emphasized that there are two 'bankruptcies'.

In terms of the number of new companies, the growth rate in the third quarter was 90, compared to 108 in the same period last year. There are currently 23301 jewelry companies in the United States, a decrease of 2.6% from the end of the third quarter of 2022. Among them:

The number of jewelry retailers in the United States was 17669, a year-on-year decrease of 2.7%;

·The number of wholesalers was 3379, a year-on-year decrease of 1.8%;

·There are 2253 processing factories, a year-on-year decrease of 3.2%.

In addition, JBT also downgraded 881 jewelry companies in the United States and Canada in the third quarter, from 988 in the same period last year. The number of companies with higher ratings was 728, compared to 733 in the same period last year. Botswana ODC Suspends Blank Sales

Botswana's state-owned diamond sales company ODC (Okavango Diamond Company) temporarily decided to suspend the sales of rough diamonds, thus becoming another upstream enterprise after De Beers to "help adjust the global diamond inventory". Executive Director Mmetla Masire believes that the global diamond jewelry market is currently experiencing low demand and the industry needs to reduce inventory.

ODC set an outstanding revenue record of $1.1 billion in 2022. The company typically holds 10 rough auctions annually to sell 25% of the rough shares it receives from Debswana. (Note: Debswana is a diamond mining company jointly invested by the Botswana government and De Beers Group. Last year, the output was about 24 million carats, 25% of which were sold by ODC and 75% by De Beers.)

DC has currently cancelled the November auction and has not yet decided whether the December auction will be held, considering the sluggish market in China and the United States.

Masire stated in an interview: For the first time in history, we have had to pile up our own inventory because we do not want to irresponsibly transport rough diamonds to the market - after all, there has been an oversupply situation. We have now stopped next month's auction and will spontaneously decide to suspend the import of diamond rough diamonds from October 15th to December 15th, in response to December's work