Bruce Cleaver CEO, De Beers Group

“While we understand that the current time is difficult and we need to assist everyone in the diamond industry, it is not right to tinker the supply chain.”

- Sumesh Wadhera

In the “AOJ TALK of the Day” Show, Sumesh Wadhera, Chief Editor, The Art of Jewellery spoke to Bruce Cleaver, CEO of De Beers Group to discuss on the impact of Covid-19 on the Diamond industry and the way forward. Bruce Cleaver shared various insights with regard to diamond industry and the initiatives taken by De Beers to manage the Covid-19 crisis. We at AOJ would like to share this interesting Q&A session with our readers.

AOJ: Covid-19 is one of the biggest and unprecedented challenges in our lifetime in terms of health and economy, give us a 360 degree view of its impact on the Diamond Jewellery industry. What do you see?

BRUCE CLEAVER: Clearly, this is a serious health and economic crisis that the world is facing and the diamond jewellery industry is right in the middle of it like most industries. For us at De Beers, the first and foremost important thing is keeping our people safe. So, our first response to this has been very significant, making sure that our people are safe wherever might be. Now, the 4 main mining operations of De Beers are in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada. So we have got huge amount of work there and we are working with the communities to keep the workforce safe. To keep them safe, we have tremendous screening protocols, testing protocols etc. We are also helping the governments around the world to step up their contribution to this. We have made significant donations, also sourced significant amount of highly specialized medical equipment for our governments to help with the testing etc.