Editor’s Note
This article explores Antwerp’s central role in the global diamond trade, a position it has held for over a century. It examines how this city, which processes nearly half the world’s rough diamonds, sits at the complex intersection of romance, commerce, and a history of conflict.
For more than a century, Antwerp has been a crucial hub for a $100 billion global industry—one that virtually defines love and commitment, and one that has fueled vicious wars and terrible exploitation. The Belgian city is the world’s biggest trading post for rough diamonds: About 40% of the world’s annual supply of the gems pass through Antwerp’s Diamantkwartier on their circuitous journey from mine to jewelry store.
The diamond district, three narrow streets near the train station, doesn’t exactly reflect the glamour and glitter of the finished product. But the quarter’s modest buildings bely a high-flying business inside. Upstairs in one diamond-trading building on a recent September afternoon, an engineer sat gazing at a golf-ball-size rock on his desk.
said the engineer, Narshi Kalsariya, studying a 3D image of its intricate facets on his monitor. Dug out of the ground more than 7,000 miles away, in the southern African country of Botswana, the rock weighs more than 1,000 carats, or about seven ounces.
The size alone is notable: Only about 10 gem-quality diamonds that big have ever been found since humans began digging for them more than 2,000 years ago.
But just as notable is the company that currently controls this rare find. It’s not De Beers, the London-based industry powerhouse that mines and trades nearly one-third of the world’s diamonds (most of them from Botswana). Instead it’s a tiny startup called HB Antwerp, which was launched just four years ago by three Belgian-Israeli cofounders, Rafael Papismedov, Shai de Toledo, and Oded Mansori.
Papismedov and de Toledo, who met while dropping off their kids at their Belgian school, launched the company with what seemed like a preposterous goal: to upend the 130-year-old business model for diamond trading. The industry has long been an insular one whose skills and opaque trading networks are passed down through generations from fathers to sons, like family secrets.
The two friends wanted to shift control and profits away from hubs like London, Antwerp, and Tel Aviv to the countries where the diamonds are actually found. They argue that Botswana, with just 2.6 million people and vast diamond reserves (and tourist-attracting elephants) has not gotten its fair share since Western companies began extracting its precious gems nearly 60 years ago.
By many measures, Botswana has benefited hugely. It was one of the world’s poorest countries when diamonds were discovered in the late 1960s, but the World Bank now classifies Botswana as an upper-middle-income country. Yet it still suffers from high unemployment and deep inequality, thanks to its overwhelming dependence on its global trade in diamonds—a natural resource that will someday run dry.
While HB’s model does little to lessen that reliance on a single industry, Botswanan politicians have eyed it as a way to boost job creation and create homegrown manufacturing—and keep more of the profits from the industry in-country. Botswana’s market share in diamonds has surged this year, as the U.S. and Europe began blocking diamonds from Russia, the world’s biggest producer; that growth is giving the model a crucial test run.
These circumstances put HB Antwerp at the heart of a roiling debate over whether Western companies are fleecing resource-rich African countries—including those with critical minerals like cobalt, which are essential for semiconductors—and whether those companies deepen the divide between rich and poor regions. Those issues have come into sharper focus since the COVID pandemic wreaked havoc on supply chains, and as younger consumers increasingly seek products that reflect their social values.
To many critics, diamonds epitomize this controversy. And HB Antwerp’s founders count themselves among the detractors.
says Papismedov, sitting in its headquarters atop Antwerp’s old diamond exchange building. For decades, he says, mining companies have hauled out as many rough diamonds as possible, as fast as possible, in order to recoup capital expenses, and then auctioned them in bulk to diamond dealers, who have them polished and cut into jewels.
The African countries aren’t the only ones who suffer from this relentless extraction: The diamond market is hurting too.
Papismedov says. “It is a market for gamblers.” After a post-pandemic spending boom, demand for diamonds has fallen steadily since 2022, as China’s economy has slowed and inflation has risen. De Beers’s revenues sank 21% in the first half of this year, compared with the same period last year, and that downturn came after a steep drop in 2023.
Diamond dealers are now pinning their hopes on Americans splurging this Christmas season.
Isi Morsel, president of the Antwerp World Diamond Council, the leading trade organization, and CEO of Dali Diamond, tells Fortune.
