The diamond mining industry has evolved and changed a lot over the past quarter of a century. The once unpredictable, complicated, and dangerous industry has become much more profitable and better regulated.
The working conditions have also improved thanks to the advancements in technology. Recent developments also paved the way for discovering new materials that help ensure the industry’s longevity; one excellent example is a reaming shell supplier that now produces more reliable and robust reaming shells to increase mining productivity.
If you want to learn more about how the diamond mining industry changed over the years, you’ve come to the right place.
The Working Climate
The last twenty-five years have witnessed a vast improvement in the working conditions of the diamond mining industry. The positive developments became possible thanks, in part, to the different agencies formed and existed throughout these years.
Could you take a look at some of them below?
1.Diamond Development Initiative (DDI)
The organization exists because of one primary purpose – help the diamond miners improve their lives. The Diamond Development Initiative helped ensure that there are standards in place for education, treatment, and working conditions of individuals who earn a living by digging for diamonds.
These standards cover many countries in the African continent where diamond mining is prevalent, including the Ivory Coast and Namibia.
2.Mine Safety And Health Administration (MSHA)
This agency functions by helping prevent injuries, disease onset, and death in miners due to a low working environment.
The Mine Safety And Health Administration currently works on eradicating the black lung disease as part of its ‘Respirable Coal Dust Rule’ campaign. The campaign seeks to limit the miner’s exposure to the black lung disease-causing harmful dust.
The MSHA has worked with different diamond mining companies to tighten up the
standards already in place and prevent the increasing instances of black lung disease.
3.A New Consumer Demand Hit The Industry Both Positively And Negatively
The new consumer demand from India and China has increased the diamond mining industry’s opportunities, with companies deciding to double or triple their manufacturing rate to keep up with the requests. On a negative note, many companies have over-speculated on the new consumer demand, which resulted in financial consequences.
The consequences pressured the diamond industry to operate more transparently, shift in the cultural market and generational consumer, and try to use lab-diamond production technology to their advantage. All of these developments have made the diamond industry more challenging to predict and more appealing to observe.
Expect more structural changes to occur in the industry for the coming years as prompted by the opportunities popping up and its challenges. These changes will revolve around three primary forces: an entirely new operating discipline, a brand new technology, and more emphasis on consumers’ new generation. These three forces impact the whole of the diamond industry, from the miners to the retailers.
4.Advancements In Technology For Diamond Lab Production
While most people still don’t think that lab-created diamonds are a good idea, it’ll change the whole diamond mining landscape, especially since there’s now a growing base of customers that will embrace the technology, the price of its products, and its environmentally conscious nature.
Synthetic diamonds, or the lab-created ones, have been existing for over a half-century already. Still, it has only been recently when its production became economical for non-jewelry use. Today, over ninety-five percent of industrial diamonds for abrasive purposes are products of diamond lab production.
The industry experts predict this technology to continue improving with more investments that several companies pour towards producing gem-quality lab-created diamonds. The only challenge for the synthetic diamond business idea is to develop a technology capable of producing genuinely gem-quality products and finding the perfect way to offer these lab-created diamonds at a price significantly lower than that of the natural ones.
Nevertheless, diamond lab production will inevitably change the diamond mining industry forever, like how a nuclear deal changed the crude oil industry throughout the years.
Latest Innovations
Recent innovations, like diamond lab production technology, have impacted the diamond mining industry and the mining industry. These discovery and computation innovations can either catapult the industry forward or halt its progress in the long run.
The latest changes that the mining industry has seen also include geo-metallurgy, or the process that follows the life of material from discovery to mining to production. Another one is the MMI (Mobile Metal Ion Geochemistry), which enables miners to detect mine deposits beneath the Earth’s surface using a combination of chemical ligands, soil samples, and high-end equipment.
Conclusion
With the improvement of standards for diamond mine workers and technology innovations, one can expect the diamond mining industry to continue moving forward.
It’s also interesting to see how the industry will respond to the diamond lab production technology development in the years to come as natural diamonds. The lab-produced ones will compete for the attention of diamond buyers around the world.
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