De Beers Group Industry Services on Tuesday announced that all four of its diamond verification instruments (DVIs) submitted for testing as part of the Assure programme had received “outstanding” results.

The Assure programme is a joint collaboration between the Diamond Producers Association (DPA) and Signet Jewelers, with input provided by other participants in the diamond industry and gemmological laboratories, including De Beers Group.

The programme on Tuesday published the results from the independent performance tests of the DVIs in the Assure directory.

Through the Assure directory, trade participants can access objective and third-party verified information on the relative performance of DVIs, as well as receive guidance on how to ensure their business is protected from undisclosed laboratory-grown diamonds.

De Beers Group Industry Services submitted four instruments for testing – DiamondSure, AMS2, SYNTHdetect and DiamondView, receiving very good results overall.

All four verification instruments gave a 0% false positive rate, meaning no synthetic diamonds were misidentified as natural diamonds.

All of the instruments either identified or referred 100% of synthetic diamonds for further testing.

The DiamondView achieved 100% accuracy and a zero referral rate and the AMS2 and SYNTHdetect instruments referred less than 0.75% of natural diamonds for further testing.

“We are thrilled to have received the results of the Assure programme’s independent testing and to have learnt that our diamond verification instruments performed so well.

“It is of key importance to the diamond industry that we are able to provide clear guidance about the capabilities of diamond detection instruments so that our customers can have confidence in the machinery and their ability to detect laboratory-grown diamonds,” De Beers Group Industry Services president Jonathan Kendall commented.

“Trade participants have a shared responsibility to disclose the nature of the product they are selling to protect the end consumer,” said DPA CEO Jean-Marc Lieberherr.

“Through the Assure programme, we will support the diamond trade, from independent jewellery retailers to large diamond manufacturers, to make informed decisions on how to ensure that undisclosed laboratory-grown diamonds do not enter their natural diamond supply chain. The Assure test results should be considered alongside guidelines formulated by the Responsible Jewellery Council,” he added.

The Assure programme partnered with the 11 manufacturers representing the 18 most widely available Diamond Verification instruments in the market.

The instruments submitted to Assure have been tested in accordance with the methods and protocols in the Diamond Verification Instruments Standard, which was developed in collaboration with the independent third-party test agency UL and a Technical Committee comprising leading scientists and academics from major gemmological organisations.

The DVIs were tested with a deliberately challenging sample, which included natural diamonds, laboratory-grown diamonds and, where applicable, diamond simulants, to provide an indication of the relative performance of the instruments.

The first round of testing took place at UL’s laboratories in Canton, Massachusetts, in the US.