Beginning in October, the 183-year-old luxury retailer Tiffany will provide expanded origin details for newly sourced, individually registered diamonds that trace the stone’s path from the ground to the jewelry case. The project, which the company says is an industry first, took nearly two decades to complete due to the challenges of tracking down sourcing information.
“The diamond industry is still, on the whole, very opaque about the jewelry supply chain,” said Anisa Kamadoli Costa, Tiffany’s chief sustainability officer. The jewelry market, now reeling from a precipitous drop in demand amid the Covid-19 pandemic, remains murky even after decades of reform over concerns about human rights abuses at mines and factories. The sector has annual sales of about $80 billion, according to De Beers.
Tiffany said it doesn’t acquire diamonds from “areas of concern,” such as Zimbabwe and Angola, where international observers say mining is associated with human rights violations. A look at the company’s vast global supply chain, which stretches from Namibia to Cambodia and beyond, shows the challenges of tracking a product that often measures just a few millimeters across.
The company’s diamonds are mined by suppliers in countries including South Africa, Russia and Namibia, then brought to Belgium for sorting. From there, the rough stones travel to countries such as Mauritius, Botswana or Cambodia to be cut and polished, and then head to laboratories in the U.S. and Southeast Asia for grading and quality control. Those that pass go on to Tiffany facilities to be put in jewelry and shipped out to stores. The majority of its diamonds are set at U.S. factories.
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