Starcast
Join the waitlist
Best of: How the diamond industry lost its sparkle
Coming soon to iPhone. Already have it? “Listen in Starcast” takes you straight there.
On this episode
About this episode
This week, we are revisiting a favorite episode. The natural diamond industry is facing an existential threat: lab-grown diamonds. They are chemically and physically identical to natural stones but they are a fraction of the price. Eleanor Olcott, the FT’s China technology correspondent, travelled to the epicentre of lab-grown diamond production in the central Chinese province of Henan to see how they are made. While the FT’s natural resources editor, Leslie Hook, explores what the sale of De Beers, the natural diamond producer, could mean for the future of the sector. This episode originally aired on September 10 2025. Clip from Arnold Worldwide The FT does not use generative AI to voice…