Journeyman Pictures has dumped a quarter hour’s worth of unedited footage of a tour of De Beers’ sorting rooms by a Namibian Prime Ministerial delegation in 2000.
It gives a rare look into how they sort rough diamonds by machine and by hand. We also see diamonds being marked up for cutting.
This is followed by the display of a huge cut diamond, then an interview with an executive about the problems of illegal diamond mining and smuggling from Angola. He talks about the impact of additional supply on the market and the difficulty they have in maintaining an orderly price.