De Beers' rough diamonds sales fall to $355m

Diamond miner De Beers earned $355-million from the sale of rough diamonds in its second sales cycle of this year.

CEO Bruce Cleaver on Wednesday noted that, in response to improved demand for rough diamonds during the first sales cycle, the company, recognised the impact of the Covid-19, or coronavirus, outbreak on customers focused on supplying the Chinese market and put in place additional targeted flexibility to enable customers to defer allocations of the relevant rough diamonds.

Nevertheless, the sales value for the second sales cycle fell well short of the $551-million achieved in the first sales cycle of this year.

Sales were also about 28.4% lower than that of the second sales cycle of 2019.