MGJC on May18 at Montenegro
Mediterranean Gemmological and Jewellery Conference (MGJC)
founder Branko Deljanin said synthetic diamonds would be the one of the topics of MGJC 2018 in Budva. Montenegro will greet MGJC delegates on May 18. All preparations are coming together, we have participants from record breaking 24 countries!
Branko Deljanin said, In the last few years, more and more parcels of natural near-colourless diamonds are salted with synthetic diamonds and have put the industry on high alert. Major threat coming from smaller and melee diamonds that are not sent to labs for proper testing and grading, where they could be identified with combination of standard and advanced instruments.
It’s even bigger problem when they are mounted in jewellery so some fast “melee screening:” instruments cannot be used. Though amount of lab-grown diamonds is only few percent of natural diamond market every year production is doubling.
Difficult to say, production is still larger than consumption, maybe around 4-6% the most. World synthetic diamond production volume between 2014 and 2017 increased from 350,000ct to 4.5 million carats per year what is quite impressive.
Problem is really that in this decade production of natural diamonds decreased, and it requires lot of time to find and then finance and open new diamond mines. Millennials are more open to buy synthetic diamonds and could switch more to this product for same ethical reasons as they switched from fur to synthetic leather.
Talking about other key sessions he said, we always make sure we have lectures from leading experts with original research on topics that are of most concern to the jewellery industry and this year focus is on Synthetic Diamonds and Gems.
Our conference positioned itself as bridge between many business and appraising conferences and a few highly scientific conferences as ‘trade-technical conference’ that brings up current trade problems and offers solutions with standard and affordable instruments.
Over the last 3 annual Mediterranean Gem and Jewellery conferences and over 30 workshops given in 17 countries, CGL-GRS Swiss Canadian gemlab Chief Gemmologist Branko Deljanin, IGL Greece Director George Spyromilios and Australian Gemetrix instrument maker John Chapman assembled a NEW Portable ‘Synthetic Diamond Identification Kit’ with AGIL Hong Kong Director Dominic Mok that will be launched at MGJ conference e 2018 in Montenegro.
Education is what it takes for the Diamond and Jewellery industry to grow and to endure the difficult times, so we prepared 6 practical workshops with latest research samples on natural, treated and synthetic diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds.
A ‘Round Table’ on "Marketing of Synthetic Diamonds and Synthetic Gems in 21st century" with 6 international experts will discuss issues and answering questions from other delegates. Beside gemologists and appraisers, we are having more retail jewelers and dealers attending, meaning they are concerned about synthetic gems.
Due to the central position of Montenegro in Europe and Mediterranean, many participants are expected from Western Europe and USA, but also from Russia, Turkey and other Mediterranean countries.
