TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The new Diamond Bourse of Canada (DBC), which began full operations this month, is seeing interest already from fast-growing diamond market China.

The trading of diamonds between DBC members is now taking place, and an initial tender of polished stones from the new cutting and polishing facility in Sudbury, Ontario, has been scheduled for the first week of May, bourse president Bhushan Vora said in an interview.

The DBC, located in downtown Toronto, was established to provide a secure, convenient place for diamond dealers to meet to buy and sell rough and polished diamonds.

Now that it is up-and-running, Canada can boast a 'mine to finger' diamond pipeline, with mines in Ontario and the Northwest Territories, cutting and polishing facilities operating in both regions, and now the ability to trade diamonds in a central location.

This makes the country pretty unique worldwide, Vora pointed out, as the major diamond-trading and processing centres elsewhere in the world do not have any significant production themselves.

Canada is the third-largest diamond producer, after Botswana and Russia, and could one day rival diamond-buying destinations like Belgium and Israel, Vora said.

“We've seen a lot of people from overseas taking a lot of interest in our diamond bourse,” he commented.

There have already been a couple of visits by Chinese groups, which are looking to increase trade relationships, and to source rough and polished diamonds.

“And the Indians are looking, the Israelis are looking. Everybody's looking at Canada,” Vora said.

“We've opened the window for a lot of conversation with industries across the world.”

DIAMOND TENDERS

The first polished diamond tenders to DBC members will be held in May, with diamonds that have been cut and polished at the Sudbury facility that buys a portion of the rough diamonds produced at De Beers' Victor mine in the province.

Down the road, there is the potential for the bourse to host tenders of rough diamonds too, although the Canadian miners have their own systems in place already, so it may take time for them to see the value in holding sales in Toronto, Vora said.

Besides Victor in Ontario, Canada has three diamond mines in the Northwest Territories - BHP Billiton's Ekati mine, De Beers Canada's Snap Lake operation and the Diavik mine, which is owned by Rio Tinto and Harry Winston Diamond Corp, which each market their own share of the rough stones.

“Eventually, we feel that the mining companies will start to see that it is cost effective to do things in Canada. And people from all over the world can come here to buy.”

From an initial founding group of 14, the DBC now has around 40 members and interest continues to grow as traders and other industry participants see the benefits of the initiative, Vora said.

For example, the bourse's custom bonded warehouse, the first of its kind in North America, allows members to bring diamonds in for inspection or to bring a customer to look at them before clearing them through customs.

“That's a big advantage, because it means you no longer need to be travelling all over the world to do these things,” Vora commented.

The trading floor also holds a technology centre, which boasts advanced systems including a Diamond Sure machine for testing for synthetic and HPHT trade diamonds, donated by De Beers.

The DBC's other facilities include safety deposit boxes and a diamond-grading certificate window, which works as a drop-off point where members can submit diamonds for certification and receive same-day diamond-grading services.

The 14 founding members each put up C$10 000 in initial capital to establish the DBC, and that money was matched by the Ontario government. The Northwest Territories government also contributed C$20 000.

The Canadian bourse was the 29th in the world to be set up.

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