Surat: Antwerp, the world’s largest diamond trading centre may give sleepless nights to the skilled diamond artisans in the diamond cutting and polishing centre in Surat. The research centre of Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) has unveiled a revolutionary technology that fully automates and accelerates the diamond polishing process without the involvement of human hand.
AWDC’s research centre Scientific and Technological Research Centre for Diamonds (WTOCD) has succeeded in developing a technology that fully automates the polishing process and moreover is able to polish a diamond 10 to 20 times faster than by hand.
Diamonds have been polished by hand on a polishing wheel for centuries. In the 1960s, Antwerp became the modern leader of the diamond trade in part due to the large number of polishers — some 10,000 — that plied their trade in Antwerp. However, the number of polishers in Antwerp has dwindled in the decades due to high wages in Belgium and this saw the emergence of Surat as global diamond cutting and polishing hub.
At present, around 14 out of 15 diamond mines in the world are cut and polished in Surat and other parts of Gujarat, including Amreli and Bhavnagar. The annual export of polished diamonds from India is pegged at $21 billion.
It took about 10 years of research that WTOCD finally succeeded in developing a cutting edge technology called Fenix, which can now cut and polish a stone in one-and-a-half-hour.
CEO of AWDC Ari Epstein said, “This discovery fundamentally changes the diamond polishing process and Fenix can be a game-changer for the Antwerp diamond industry. This technology gives Antwerp the potential to bring a share of diamond polishing back to Antwerp. Given the fact that such tremendous volumes of roughs are traded here, and 90 per cent of it is polished elsewhere, the potential to immediately polish stones here and then trade them out of Antwerp can spark a genuine revolution in our diamond trade.”
Diamond industry analyst Aniruddha Lidbide said, “The new revolutionary machine will pose a big challenge to the artisanal skills of the diamond polishers in Surat. At present, from near gem quality to solitaires, the diamond polishers of Surat and Gujarat are the leaders. But, the machine developed by AWDC will change the scenario in the longer run.”