Alrosa Boosts Sales with Tightened Format

RAPAPORT… Alrosa has retooled its method for bringing diamonds to market, shaving 15 to 25 days off the time lag between processing and sales.



The new system, which the miner has been testing over the past three years, helped the company lower its work-in-progress inventory by 4.3 million carats, it said Wednesday. That enabled the company to realize an extra $320 million between 2018 and 2021 by selling diamonds 30% to 40% sooner than it had previously.



“The project…helped us to provide an undersupplied market with the maximum amount of rough diamonds when our clients needed them,” said Alrosa deputy CEO Evgeny Agureev. “We were able to reduce our inventories to a record minimum of 8.4 million carats. In addition…we started actively developing the system for continuous improvement in our sales division.”



The company implemented several initiatives, including automating its rough-diamond sorting and getting its goods to trading sessions more quickly, it said. Alrosa intends to continue its technology upgrade to save even more time.



“We will further automate sorting by developing a special software for smart management and process control,” Agureev added. “We see further potential for improvements in this area, which will help drive work-in-progress inventories even lower.”



Image: Rough-diamond sorting and weighing. (Alrosa)