De Beers Completes Final London Sight

Reuters reported that this week, De Beers will hold its last sight in London. Moving forward, sights will take place in Gaborone, Botswana.

As quoted in the market news:

The 2011 decision to move – which will cost more than $120 million, including shiny new offices in Gaborone – follows years of negotiations between Anglo-American-owned De Beers and Botswana, the largest producer of gem diamonds and home to mines like Jwaneng, the world’s richest.

The move secured a new 10-year contract for the sorting, valuing and sales of diamonds from the Botswana mines run by Debswana, a 50:50 joint venture between De Beers and the southern African country’s government – the longest sales contract agreed to date between the two sides.

It will shift more than $6 billion of annual rough diamond sales from an international financial center to a comparative backwater with a population of 230,000, in one of the most dramatic examples of a producing country battling successfully to keep value and profits from the raw materials at home.

Click here to read the full Reuters report.