New Synthetics Facility to Open in Israel

RAPAPORT… Lab-grown diamond producer Green Rocks is launching a new facility in Israel, pledging to operate the center in accordance with a new sustainability standard.

The production and research site in Nof Hagalil, northern Israel, will create “thousands of carats” of untreated synthetic diamonds, said Leon Peres, CEO of Green Rocks, in an online presentation last week.

Headquartered in Florida, Green Rocks is one of the initial participants in a program by SCS Global Services to achieve sustainability certification for lab-grown stones. The company, part of Ofer Mizrahi Diamonds, will build the site in compliance with SCS-007, the standard SCS is developing for natural and lab-grown diamonds.

The new facility will partly use renewable energy, and will generate “hundreds of new high-paying jobs” in a relatively poor and ethnically diverse area of Israel, Peres noted. The local area around the facility — near the city of Nazareth — is defined by the government as financially disadvantaged, with above-average unemployment, he said.

“This gives us a tremendous opportunity to do a lot of good to the area by building our facility over there,” Peres explained. “It wasn’t the most comfortable thing to do, but it was the right thing to do.”

The factory will be fully operational by the first quarter of 2022. It will cover 80,000 square feet, with room for expansion to 100,000 square feet.

Israel is also home to Lusix, a lab-grown producer founded by digital-printing pioneer Benny Landa. In December 2019, Landa said the sector offered “a chance to bring back to Israel a diamond-production industry — but diamond synthesis, not polishing.”

Image: The new facility in Nof Hagalil, northern Israel. (Green Rocks)