Editor’s Note
This article discusses the ongoing challenges in the global diamond industry, including shifting consumer demand and market pressures, following a major producer’s recent pricing decision.
According to media reports, since peaking in 2022, the diamond industry has been facing one of the most severe and prolonged crises in its modern history, influenced by factors such as cooling luxury consumption in major consumer countries and the rise of lab-grown diamonds. The situation has been exacerbated by the United States imposing tariffs on India, the world’s largest diamond exporter.
Now, over a year later, De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer, has once again announced a price cut for its diamonds.
At its first diamond auction of the year this week, De Beers significantly lowered the selling price of rough diamonds weighing over 0.75 carats. The exact magnitude of this price adjustment is currently unknown.
Industry insiders note that De Beers adopted a unified pricing invoice strategy for this auction—no longer setting individual prices for each parcel of diamonds, but instead issuing a consolidated total price invoice, making the extent of the price cut difficult to calculate. Industry professionals estimate the price reduction range to be around 10%-15%.
De Beers’ price cut stems from a decline in global diamond market demand leading to falling prices. According to the RapNet Diamond Price Index (RAPI), in 2025, the RAPI for diamonds over 3 carats slightly declined by 0.4%; small-sized (0.3-0.5 carat) daily consumer-grade diamonds, impacted by the competition from lab-grown diamonds and softening demand, saw more pronounced price drops, with 0.5-carat diamonds falling over 20% for the full year 2025.
De Beers holds significant pricing power in the rough diamond market. The company holds 10 diamond auctions annually, where participating “sightholders” typically can only passively accept the prices and quantities offered. However, in the current tight market environment, many diamond dealers are no longer willing to pay the prices set by De Beers.
It is worth noting that in recent years, diamonds, as a global luxury symbol, have been experiencing significant turbulence. End-user demand continues to soften; U.S. polished diamond imports fell 48% year-on-year in 2025; consumer confidence is insufficient; high gold prices are driving consumers towards lighter gold jewelry, further suppressing diamond demand. De Beers has already accumulated over $2 billion in inventory, and since last year, the成交 rate at its auctions has also been declining.
Industry analysts point out that as an upstream industry leader, De Beers’ purpose for cutting prices is, on one hand, to boost sales performance, and on the other hand, to give midstream processors greater profit margins to stimulate market demand.
Official information shows that De Beers was founded in London in 1888, and its advertising slogan “A Diamond is Forever” has had widespread influence. As the world’s largest diamond production and sales company, De Beers once controlled 90% of the global diamond supply market and currently still controls 60% of the global rough diamond trade.
In fact, the trend of both diamond sales volume and prices falling significantly has persisted for several years.
As early as September 2023, CCTV Finance reported that in the previous year, certified diamond prices had fallen by 35% to 40%. Among them, diamonds from 50 points to 3 carats were the most severely impacted, with sales volume also declining by 30% to 35% during the same period.
At that time, De Beers had already cut prices for its mainstream products—natural diamonds from 2 to 4 carats—by 40%. Subsequently, in January 2024, De Beers lowered rough diamond prices by about 10%, and in December of the same year, it again cut prices for polished diamonds sold in the secondary market by 10% to 15%.
According to reports, ten years ago, a Chengdu resident, Ms. Li, spent tens of thousands of yuan to purchase a one-carat diamond ring. Now, after consulting multiple recycling stores, she received a highest估价 of no more than thirty thousand yuan, and the diamond ring in her hand has been rendered almost worthless by the depreciation.
A woman from Anhui who spent 18,000 yuan to buy a diamond ring ten years ago shared on social media that she can now only get a回收 price of 180 yuan, a depreciation rate as high as 99%. This is not an isolated case. In Xichong, Sichuan, a 34-year-old woman discovered that the two wedding rings she bought for 14,000 yuan ten years ago can now be sold for less than 200 yuan combined,直言 “I should have bought gold instead.”
As a comparison, in January 2016 ten years ago, the price of old temple gold was about 290 yuan/gram, while on January 20, 2026, the price of old temple gold had reached 1,456 yuan/gram, an increase of over 400%.
A trader in the jewelry industry told reporters that generally only large-carat (referring to one carat and above) natural diamonds are qualified to be recycled. But at this point, people will find that those diamonds bought earlier at high prices are actually not保值. The general industry practice for recycling is 40%-60% of the original price, and the specific amount still depends on the color and brand of the item.
Furthermore, increasingly cheaper lab-grown diamonds are also severely挤压 the生存 space of natural diamonds.
According to CCTV Finance reports, in 2025, in the global diamond jewelry market, lab-grown diamond sales accounted for over 40%, an increase of more than 8 times compared to 2019.
At the same time, in recent years, the retail price of lab-grown diamonds has fallen by over 50% from its peak. Now, the price of a 1-carat lab-grown diamond has dropped from 8,000 yuan to 3,500 yuan, less than one-tenth of the price of a natural diamond of equivalent quality.
Currently, China’s synthetic diamond industry规模 leads the world, with increasingly丰富 downstream products. The “2024 China Jewelry Industry Development Report” mentions that, according to incomplete statistics, China’s lab-grown diamond production in 2024 was about 22 million carats, a year-on-year increase of 144.44%, accounting for 63% of global total production.
At a store专门 selling lab-grown diamonds in Nanyang, Henan, reporters saw a continuous stream of consumers前来咨询 and选购, mainly young people. The store负责人 indicated that young people account for about 70%, and sales in 2025 doubled year-on-year.
Staff members stated that the hardness, color, and other indicators of these lab-grown diamonds can completely rival天然 diamonds, making it very difficult to distinguish them with the naked eye, but the price is only one-fifth or even lower than that of natural diamonds.