Russian mining giant Alrosa has announced diamond sales results for December and interim results for 2017. According to the miner, it sold $237.8 million worth of rough and polished diamonds in December. Rough sales totaled $228.3 million, while polished diamond sales totaled $9.5 million.
As for 2017, preliminary figures show that rough and polished diamond sales amounted to $4.267 billion. Rough diamonds totaled $4.17 billion, while polished diamond sales totaled $96.9 million.
Alrosa VP Yury Okoemov commented: “In 2017, rough diamond demand was fairly stable, market activity was in line with the seasonality and our expectations. The average price of rough diamonds sold by Alrosa was a little lower than a year ago, which is due to the changed sales assortment resulting from the increased demand for small-sized rough diamonds from Indian diamond cutting sector in the first half of 2017”.
As for 2018, Okoemov said that Alrosa expects a balanced diamond market “due to a moderate growth in the global demand for diamond jewelry and no major change in the global diamond mining”.
