GIA Tracking Program Gains Traction

RAPAPORT… The Gemological Institute of
America (GIA) has advanced its Mine to Market (M2M) diamond-tracking initiative beyond the pilot stage, the grading center said Monday. 

The GIA has signed up
“dozens” of retailers, several manufacturers and the majority of rough-diamond
producers to its initiative so far, it said.



Through the pilot, the organization has already processed thousands of rough diamonds, ranging in size from 1 carat
to over 100 carats, it continued.


“The M2M program has moved beyond the pilot phase, with a growing number of retailers, manufacturers and producers signing up,” Stephen Morisseau, the GIA’s director of corporate communications, told Rapaport News.


The GIA initially announced
the M2M pilot at the JCK Las Vegas show last year. The program, developed by
GIA scientists, links polished diamonds with their original rough by assessing
the stone at various stages of production. Traders and consumers can view a diamond’s journey on a dedicated mobile app.


During the pilot phase, the
GIA worked primarily with Russian miner Alrosa, which provided the lab with
rough for evaluation before the stones entered the market. The GIA then created
a file for each diamond before returning them to Alrosa, which then kept a
record of the goods through the cutting process in order to reference the
polished coming from those pieces of rough when the stones returned to the GIA
for grading.


The GIA’s locations in
Mumbai and New York, as well as its labs in Gaborone, Botswana, and in Johannesburg, South Africa, are the only ones that have the imaging equipment necessary for the M2M service. The
GIA plans to expand the service to its new labs in Antwerp and Surat, India.



The GIA intends to pursue additional
participants — including retailers, manufacturers and miners — while collecting
feedback from current ones.