From the moment rough diamonds arrive from mine operations to the point they are presented for sale, De Beers Group’s Sky Park facility has become the central point where precision, security and consistency converge. Since opening in March 2023, the De Beers Sightholder Sales South Africa (DBSSSA) facility has strengthened the end-to-end flow of South Africa’s rough diamond production, efficiently guiding each stone through cleaning,  sorting, valuation, traceability and final sale.

Strategically located near O. R. Tambo International Airport, east of Johannesburg, DBSSSA serves as the primary processing and sales hub for De Beers’ South African rough diamond production. The facility combines proprietary technology, specialist expertise and rigorous controls to move diamonds securely and efficiently from production through to market.

According to Blanche Louw, Senior Operations Manager at DBSSSA, the facility was purpose-designed around the logical progression of each diamond’s journey. “Our operation is meticulously sequenced - moving diamonds through the cleaning zones and immediately into technical sorting and valuation areas,” she says. “The layout of the building is specifically designed to bring optimal efficiencies into our processes.”

Diamonds arrive under tightly controlled custody and are first weighed and registered before entering the Central Cleaning Plant. Here, De Beers has introduced an innovative alternative to traditional hydrofluoric acid cleaning, significantly improving both safety and sustainability while still meeting stringent valuation and export standards.

This sustainability focus extends to the building itself which has earned a five-star Green Star rating. A 360 kW solar installation, comprising more than 1,200 panels and 575 kilowatt-hours of battery storage, further enhances the facility’s environmental performance while reducing energy costs.

Once cleaned, diamonds move into specialised valuation and sorting streams where carat weight, clarity, colour and cutting potential are assessed. Smaller high volume stones are processed through automated technical sorting systems, while larger higher value stones continue to rely on the expertise of highly skilled human sorters. Together, these processes enable diamonds to be classified into more than 10,000 categories, each linked to De Beers’ global pricing framework.

A defining strength of the operation is the consistency it delivers through De Beers’ Sightholder sales model. By aggregating like-for-like categories from multiple mines, the business creates consistent rough diamond “boxes” tailored to customers’ manufacturing requirements and downstream market demand. These are presented at ten Sight sales events each year, with South African customers viewing their allocations in dedicated rooms at Sky Park.

Traceability and provenance are also embedded at the core of the operation. All rough diamonds of one carat and above are digitally scanned on arrival to create a unique fingerprint record. At the point of sale, each diamond is rescanned and matched against the original intake data through Tracr, De Beers’ blockchain-backed traceability platform, which now holds records for more than five million rough diamonds.