ALROSA, the world leader in diamond production, announced rough and polished diamond sales preliminary results for 2018, its corporate web page reported, noting that total diamond sales in 2018 grew 6% YoY and reached $4.507 bln. Rough diamonds sales grew to $4.412 bln, polished diamonds sales stood at $95.3 mio.
According to Evgeny Agureev, Member of the Management Board, “A 6% sales growth in 2018 was driven by both high demand for rough diamonds and positive price dynamics in the first half of the year, market demand was strong in all rough diamond categories, and traditional slowdown in demand in the second quarter due to seasonality was not registered this year. In the second half of the year, buying activity in the low-priced product segment significantly deteriorated due to weakening of the global market situation and both seasonality and destocking at a number of Indian midstream companies. At the same time, the company was actively engaged in optimizing its stocks, which made it possible to increase sales in physical terms, despite a decline in production in 2018 by 8% to 36.6 million carats.”
Despite the cooling of the market in the second half of 2018, the diamond producer expects the ultimate customers demand to remain stable or grow.