Lab-grown diamonds are losing their appeal due to oversupply and consumer preferences are starting to shift back to natural stones, World Diamond Council President Feriel Zerouki has said.<\/p>\n
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The natural diamond industry has seen a price slump since mid-2022 after peaking earlier that year, mainly due to the rising popularity of lab-grown gems especially among younger jewellery buyers.<\/p>\n
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But a collapse in lab-grown diamond prices on the back of increased production in China and India, has started to undermine confidence in the synthetic gems, Zerouki told Reuters<\/em> in an interview at a mining conference in Luanda on Wednesday.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “If you look at the latest trends, lab-grown diamond prices are crashing. This is impacting consumer confidence in lab-growns,” Zerouki said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Diamond industry analyst Edahn Golan says the average wholesale price of one-carat and two-carat lab-grown diamonds has fallen by as much as 96% since 2018.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Experts have warned that the price of lab-grown diamonds could drop so low that they become fashion accessories that no longer compete with diamonds, especially in the key bridal market.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “I believe that the lab-grown bubble has burst. And actually, there is a movement in the trade, even at retail level, to come back to natural diamonds,” she added.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Zerouki, who is also Vice President of Trading and Industry at global diamond giant De Beers, said a rebound in demand for natural stones would not happen by itself, but requires initiatives such as the Luanda Accord.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That is an agreement by diamond-producing countries and firms to create a collective marketing fund for natural diamonds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Under the agreement, countries such as Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia and South Africa have committed to allocate 1% of their annual diamond sales revenue to a campaign to promote natural diamonds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13604,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-13603","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Lab-grown diamonds are losing their appeal due to oversupply and consumer preferences","published_date":"2025-10-23 13:00:51","news_description":"Lab-grown diamonds are losing their appeal due to oversupply and consumer preferences","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18651,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13603\/revisions\/18651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=13603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}