Indian diamond manufacturer Ankit Gems has tripled the size of its factory in Namibia in response to the growing need for diversification and as it seeks better access to rough.
The expansion, which the company completed in September, will give it the capacity to process 10,000 carats of rough per month, up from its current level of 3,000 to 3,500 carats, Ankit Gems director Ankit Shah told Rapaport News on Wednesday. That would amount to around 25% to 30% of its global production, compared with the present level of 15% to 20%.
Ankit Gems embarked on the expansion process in 2023, after Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war had shown the importance of having operations in multiple locations.
Since then, US President Donald Trump has imposed 50% tariffs on products made in India, where Ankit — and the diamond industry — produces the vast majority of its polished.
“Events like Covid-19, events like the American tariffs taught us that it is always better to have a diversification of your risk geographically,” Shah said. “Tariffs were not [on our] mind [in 2023], but events like this, where it is either a man-made event or an environmental event or a global event…can always take place and can always destabilize a certain section of [a] region or a certain part of the world.”
Next week’s official opening of the expanded factory comes amid one of the most intensive periods of geopolitical turmoil for the diamond industry — but having more production capacity outside India gives it a potential advantage. US tariffs on Namibian products are currently 15%. The import duties are based on where the diamond was manufactured.
High-quality rough
Ankit opened its factory in Namibia in 2009, when many companies were taking space in Botswana and South Africa, Shah explained. “We thought Namibia was a better potential because of the better rough quality and since nobody was there,” the executive added. “We always tried to do something different, create a niche for ourselves.”
The company has 160 workers at the factory in Windhoek, the capital, of which 85 are cutters and the rest are in planning, accounting and other functions. It is 33% owned by Namibians, while 75% of employees are women. It now has the capacity to expand its workforce to between 400 and 450, as the facility has gone from 900 square meters to 3,000 square meters. “My plans are to eventually have that many people if there’s enough [rough] availability and there [are] goods to be cut,” Shah noted.
Growing the Namibia factory also gives the De Beers sightholder the potential to increase its allocation of rough from the miner, which makes specific goods available to companies that manufacture it in Namibia, South Africa or Botswana.
In addition, some of the polished Ankit manufactures in Namibia has the advantage of being single-origin, since a proportion of the rough is unaggregated production from the country’s land and marine mines. Unaggregated means it is not mixed with rough from other countries where De Beers operates.
“We started seeing that more and more better-end customers, higher independent [jewelers] or brands want to know…about the origin of diamonds or how the pipeline is fully integrated [and] can be seen more transparently,” Shah elaborated. “Because of that, we wanted the diamonds which are mined in Namibia, manufactured in Namibia and then go to the customers directly.”
Big focus
Factories in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa tend to focus on large, high-value goods because of the relatively high costs of running a business in those countries. Ankit’s Namibia unit handles rough of 2 carats and larger in D to Z color and fancy yellows. The largest diamond it produced there was a cushion modified brilliant, 27.39-carat, fancy-yellow, internally flawless diamond, which came from a rough of approximately 60 carats.
This is also a happy combination of events, since larger diamonds are currently performing well compared with other sizes.
“It is helping us, because most of the goods which America needs right now, which is 2 carats, and up, we can manufacture in Namibia,” Shah concluded.
The official opening of the expanded facility will take place on November 7 in the presence of Namibia President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah.
Image: Workers at the Ankit Gems factory in Windhoek, Namibia. (Ankit Gems)
