Big Events of Small Diamonds：Hot Issues in Global Diamond Testing Industry in the Spring of 2014

Confidence and assurance of consumers are the foundation of a stable and healthy gem and jewelry market. Over the past few years, reports of undisclosed synthetic diamonds have caused wide-spread concern, Gem trade organizations and gem testing labs called synthetic diamond alerts. At the same time, top gem testing labs are under mounting pressure to accurately and efficiently finish thousands of stones every day. Consequently, a race is on among these labs to develop test instrumentation to efficiently and reliably sort out synthetic diamonds particularly among smaller to melee diamonds. In the spring of 2014, three top testing labs almost simultaneously released their products to the strategic hubs of diamond trade across the globe, Three types of instrumentation are HRD Antwerp’s Alpha DiamondAnalyzer, GIA's DiamondCheck^TM, De Beers’Automated Melee Screening Device. The author would like to provide a timely update on current market development and the industry “hot-topic”.
Against the backdrop of this alarming market situation and heated technical race among the top gem testing labs, the author (Yu Jinding) was the intern at the Shanghai Division of HRD Antwerp in the spring of 2014. And in February 25^th, 2014, the author witnessed the introduction and initial testing of GIA's DiamondCheck^TM on the 14^th floor of Shanghai Diamond Exchange (SDE). The article details the initial test results and comparison of the three types of devices.
Synthetic diamonds from CVD and HPHT have been recently reported to reach top color and clarity in the 1 carat range. In response to this development of synthetic diamonds, DeBeers assured the trade and clients with its opinion that “synthetics are 100% detectable”which is further supported by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). This article updates the readers that clients may utilize rapid testing devices such as HRD Antwerp’s Alpha Diamond Analyzer,GIA's DiamondCheck^TM, De Beers’Automated Melee Screening Device(AMS) to sort synthetic diamonds correctly， quickly, effectively and conveniently.At the final part of the article, the author prospected for the possible efficient test instrumentation's specification in future, Wish the diamond industry a promising and a healthy future.