De Beers mulls retail expansion in India

Global diamond miner and trader De Beers plans to expand its retail presence in India through its jeweller partners, a top company official said on Thursday.

"We plan to increase our presence in 27 cities through 200 jewellers from 24 cities and 162 partners across the country, as India is a high growth market for us," De Beers group chief executive Philipe Mellie told reporters here.

The Luxembourg-based company has also opened an international institute of diamond grading and research at Surat in Gujarat.

The facility, set up at a cost of Rs.60 crore (about $10 million), will grade diamonds and mark them for Forevermark certification.

The institute is the group's second facility outside Antwerp in Belgium and will process diamonds valued at $500 million per annum.

"We have set up the facility at Surat, as 50 percent of our raw diamonds are polished there. It will also serve our retail partners and drastically reduce grading and certifying duration to six days from six weeks," Mellier said.

Eyeing a three percent growth worldwide in 2015, the group company plans to process 100,000 diamonds this year.