The amount of rough diamonds allocated by the Diamond Trading Company to each Sightholders is decided by a unique marketing technique for rough diamonds developed for the De Beers diamond company by its marketing department, the DTC (formally the CSO).
A Sight is a combination of the desires and requests of the customers (Sightholders) for different types of diamonds, ensuring that every customer’s specific requests are fulfilled; the availability of the diamonds in question; the ranking of the customer; and market conditions.
Sightholders come to the DTC’s offices ten times a year in order to ‘see’ the merchandise (which is the origin of the term ‘Sight’-holder). At the end of the Sight, the diamonds are sent to their intended locations.
Other diamond producers in the market, such as BHP Billiton, who market the diamonds produced by the Canadian diamond mine Ekati, and Rio Tinto, who market the diamonds produced by Diavik, have also adopted the allocation method of selling, similar to DTC’s method.
