Are lab-grown diamonds dazzling consumers?

The jewelry giant Pandora has made a big shift away from mined diamonds in favour of lab-grown diamonds.

The decision to embrace lab-grown diamonds isn’t merely a stylistic choice but a calculated response to the growing demand for sustainable luxury. The global lab-grown diamond market is already valued at a staggering $14 billion, according to the Zimnisky Rough Diamond index.

“In terms of production cost, if you take the example of a one carat versus the other carat, so roughly it’s a third of the production cost for lab grown versus mined, which obviously then ends up in a consumer price,” said Alexander Lacik, chief executive officer of Pandora.

So, how are they made?

Green Lab is based in Surat, the diamond polishing capital of India.

The company’s director is Sanket Patel. He says lab grown diamonds can be grown, from a seed of pure carbon, in around six weeks.

“Seeds are basically diamonds,” Ptael said. “It’s a single crystal diamond plate. So once the plate is placed in the reactors, we start to give it the right temperature pressure and the right gases.”

These plasma reactors essentially mimic the conditions that are needed for natural diamonds to form. A natural gas, like methane, is pumped in and broken down into carbon atoms. These accumulate on top of the crystal to form a rough diamond.

The outcome, said Alexander Lacik of Pandora, is chemically and atomically a diamond. “A diamond is a diamond, but there are different ways how you get there.”

But is anyone actually buying them? In a jewelery shop in Surat, Ritu Jalawadiya is buying a diamond bracelet for her sister. She’s opting for lab-grown diamonds though, because it’s cheaper.

“Nowadays all the people are preferring these diamonds only because they look like total real diamonds. It will not make a big hole in my pocket,” she said.

Alexander Lacik said one side to the market that can be overlooked is the self-purchase category. In other words, the “treat yourself” purchases.

“Literally nobody’s advertising or trying to position itself on that side of the spectrum except Pandora. So our idea is to offer this up to the middle of the market,” he said. “They might have aspired to own a piece of jewelry with a diamond, but they simply couldn’t afford it. So my vision is that the whole category is actually going to expand.”