De Beers, the international diamond miner and retailer, recently completed the construction of its 60,000 sq.ft facility to make lab-grown diamonds. The gemstone giant’s lab-grown diamonds are made by Lightbox Jewelry, a company owned by DeBeers. The facility that was under construction for around two years is located near Portland city in the US.
After spending a whopping $94-million on the facility, Lightbox plans to mass-produce approximately 2,00,000 carats of lab-grown diamonds every year. The company also announced that it has partnered with Blue Nile, an online jewellery retailer. As part of the partnership, an exclusivan exclusive jewellery collection with Lightbox will be released soon.
Though lab-grown diamonds are chemically and physically identical to natural diamonds, they are much cheaper and massively eco-friendlier. Lightbox sells its diamonds for about $800 per carat, which is approximately less than one-tenth the price of one-carat natural diamond may fetch in wholesale markets.
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“Manufacturing lab-grown diamonds in the US was a goal from the beginning and we are so proud to have achieved it with this state-of-the-art laboratory in a region that has become a hub for advanced industries. With this facility and our groundbreaking partnership with Blue Nilety to grow our business, improve consumer education and further establish Lightbox as the leading lab-grown diamond jewelry brand,” Steve Coe, CEO, Lightbox, was quoted in an article by Forbes.
Lightbox was introduced by the De Beers Group in September 2018 and up until now, the company manufactured its lab-grown diamonds at Element Six labs in England.
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