Over 600 diamond artisans and traders from small and medium enterprises in Surat attended a seminar on identification of synthetic diamonds held at the Saurashtra Patidar Bhavan hall in the city on February 4, 2015. The seminar was organised by the Surat Diamond Association (SDA), in collaboration with the District Industries Centre of the Government of Gujarat.

The seminar was addressed by Chandrakant Sanghavi, Regional Chairman, Gujarat, GJEPC, Dinesh Navadiya, President, SDA and Samir Joshi, Executive Director, Indian Diamond Institute, Surat. Both Sanghavi and Navadiya spoke about the threat to the diamond industry by illegal mixing of natural and synthetic diamonds being carried out by a very small number of unscrupulous elements in the industry. They reiterated the commitment of both organisations to spreading awareness among the trade about the issue. Sanghavi congratulated the SDA on their intiative in conducting the seminar.

The main presentation by Joshi covered the various processes by which synthetic diamonds are manufactured, including the HPHT and CVD methods. He spoke about the development of equipment like the D Screen and Melee Screening machines that had made it fairly simple to distinguish between natural and synthetic diamonds and said it was possible to detect attempts at mixing.

During his talk, Joshi showed the audience slides of actual photographs of over 25 natural and synthetic rough and polished stones, indicating how the synthetics could be easily identified.

“Many of the smaller traders and manufacturers are not aware of the recent developments in the field, nor do they know about the latest detection equipment. The seminar was extremely useful for them,” said Navadiya. More such programmes may be organised in the future.