October 2021 | Lab Grown Magazine

October 2021 | The Lab Grown Diamond Resource Book 26 To advertise call (888) 832-1109 | October 2021 27 Action Antwerp HBAntwerp was founded at the start of 2020 by five diamond and branding partners with one goal: Offer a solution to help simplify and clarify a historically complex mined diamond supply chain. From day one, the founding partners realized that achieving true transparency to restore consumer confidence in the diamond industry would require a fresh and ambitious strategy and tactics. They claim there is only one way to guarantee that their vision would not be compromised—acquire rough diamonds directly from the mine and execute the manufacturing process entirely in one place. In this case, Antwerp. Creating the conditions for tracking any diamond journey from mine to market in a 100% traceable way equals “the most transparent diamond in the world,”as declared by an HB Antwerp spokesperson. Months ago, HB Antwerp announced a partnership with Lucara Diamond Corporation supporting Lucara’s Karowe mine in Botswana. It committed to purchasing all rough stones over 10.8 carats. The traceability process would ensure that every diamond stage is tracked with blockchain technology, thus following the diamond from source to jeweler. The partnership touted that consumers would be able to identify the source, the intermediaries, the labor conditions—basically the entire ecological footprint. But there are some oddly worded claims to this process that imply, or even necessitate, that the con- sumer stake a claim in the process, indirectly through the diamond buyer/jeweler, but not through direct consumer interaction. The consumer interaction component,which appears to be vital to the company’s point of differentiation, gets confusing at best. Let’s examine the process to clarify it as much as possible. When asked, “What challenges do natural diamond buyers face in securing diamond data from all steps in the supply chain?” HB Antwerp’s corporate response was, “The biggest challenge in the diamond industry (traceability platforms) is that you can have too many intermediaries in the supply chain. Often, a diamond changes hands without proper documentation. There are also a lot of unnecessary intermediaries and extra complexities when you want to follow the lifecycle of a particular stone. At HB Antwerp, we decided to keep our supply chain as short and as clean as possible.” They go on to state, “By sourcing directly from the Karowe mine in Botswana, we are able to track and trace our diamonds throughout the entire process, enabling us to know the exact carbon footprint of every stone. One flight from Botswana to Antwerp represents 1.4 kg of CO 2 emission. In a traditional diamond supply chain, this number will be at least fifteen times as high, since fifteen times as many intermediaries, all over the world, are involved in the process.” I was not able to gain any further clarity on the fifteen-times position but remain fascinated by the indirect consumer connection within the diamond supply chain. I wanted to know how that would work, or at least how vital the consumer connection was to the future success of this venture. Consumers Guiding the Supply Chain? Their response was: “We want to involve the consumer in the entire process. Instead of going to a jeweler and being limited to making a choice among whatever goods are at the counter, consumers will be able to decide on what needs to happen with a rough diamond, how and where it will happen and when it will happen. Consumers will go home with the end result, but also all the data that have been produced throughout the entire process, because this data has value.” Surely that quote wasn’t intended to mean what it states. How can a consumer be in a position to decide Is our industry green washing in an attempt to garner consumer trust via headline news? You know you need to step up your green game when world-renown cities are committing their namesake to a sustainability venture. Notice the sophistication in HB Antwerp's presentation. They have a built-in insurance policy of giving a nod to all things green and being carbon neutral while never mentioning any of those words. (Image: HB Antwerp) >>