De Beers Group

De Beers Group is a member of the Anglo American group. De Beers Group was founded in 1888. She specializes in diamond exploration, mining and marketing. The number of De Beers Group employees (as of August 2020) reaches 20,000 people.

The company produces useful products minerals in various countries, including,,, and Botswana Canada. Namibia South Africa

History

2024: Stopping the sale of products with diamonds grown in the laboratory

In June 2024, it was announced that De Beers would abandon a controversial experiment selling jewelry with diamonds grown in the lab, ending a six-year program that broke one of the oldest taboos.

1954

In order to prevent workers from carrying out diamonds in their own stomachs, as well as in cuts on the body, the De Beers diamond mining corporation introduced a fluoroscopy check of each worker leaving the mine - X-ray examination in which an image of the object is obtained on a luminous screen.

A radiologist checks a miner's stomach for ingested diamonds, Kimberley, South Africa, 1954.

In those days, the danger of X-rays was not yet fully studied, so the degree of radiation protection was minimal for both workers and specialists themselves. In some cases, it could take up to 75 minutes to examine one person.

Such checks could not completely stop attempts to steal precious stones by miners, so after X-ray they were subjected to a thorough search. According to documented cases of capture of diamond "nesuns" in Botswana mines, in 36% of cases workers hid them in the anal hole, in 30% - between the buttocks, in 14% - in socks and hair (it is not clear why these categories decided to combine into one), in 5% - in the mouth, in 2% - under the scrotum, in 2% - in outerwear, in 2% - in underwear, in 9% of cases other methods were used.

1975: End of monopoly due to competition with USSR, Canada and Australia

A large-scale long-term advertising campaign by De Beers and their jewelry partners has turned diamonds into a symbol of romance and best friends of girls, and engagement rings with stones at a price of two months' wages have become an element of Western culture. The absolute monopoly of De Beers lasted until the 1970s, until new major players from the USSR, Canada and Australia appeared on the market, and the apartheid regime in South Africa began to gradually surrender.

Contrary to the imposed opinion, diamonds are not so rare and valuable. To keep prices high, mining corporations sell stones in small batches from accumulated reserves. One of the most famous representatives of American whistleblowing journalism, Edward Jay Epstein, in his investigation proved that the market has long been oversaturated with precious stones, and their prices are inflated several times, or even tenfold. Favorable conditions for such a gesheft were provided back in the 1940s.