HRD Antwerp to Stop Grading Lab-Grown Diamonds

HRD Antwerp will cease grading loose lab-grown diamonds next year, and is billing itself as the first major lab to do so.

CEO Ellen Joncheere said in a statement that HRD Antwerp will continue to analyze synthetic stones for research purposes and will still issue reports for jewelry with lab-growns.

HRD, which is owned by Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC), started grading created stones in 2019; it initially put reports in green jackets (those were quickly scrapped, after protests).

Ravi Bhansali, vice president of AWDC, says lab-growns have accounted for only a “mid-single-digit” percentage of HRD’s business.

“It’s not a matter of negativity against lab-grown,” Bhansali tells JCK. “At the end of the day, we found there’s a lot of consumer confusion created by using the same terminology and certificates. We said, let’s make a clear line and a distinction.”

The move is also “about aligning HRD’s vision with that of Antwerp World Diamond Centre,” he continued. “Antwerp as a center is predominantly interested in natural diamonds. It’s where we have a centuries-old history.”

The news follows GIA’s decision to stop grading lab-grown diamonds according to the 4Cs and instead use a simplified scale.

GIA executive vice president Tom Moses has suggested that this could be an “interim step” toward phasing out GIA’s lab-grown service altogether.

“I believe there will not be a desire [in the future] for reports for laboratory-grown diamonds,” Moses said during a June 10 panel at the World Federation of Diamond Bourses’ presidents’ meeting in New York City. That might be spurred by the narrow range of qualities being produced for lab-growns, as well as falling prices, he noted.