The Jewellers Association of Australia (JAA) has updated its list of endorsed diamond grading laboratories in a further bid to combat the issue of diamond “over-grading”.
The original list was released in November 2014 and included six laboratories – only two of which were Australian-based, with the other four being international operations. Sydney-based business Diamond Certification Laboratory Australia (DCLA), however, was recently delisted.
Upon reviewing the earlier list, the JAA’s National Industry Advisory Council (NIAC) removed the DCLA after subsequently deciding that it did not, in fact, meet the original submission criteria, which requires diamond grading businesses to be independent of businesses that sell diamonds.
“The NIAC deemed a reasonable consumer would consider that DCLA trades in diamonds, as they can purchase direct from the DCLA diamond exchange website,” a JAA statement explained.
“Our objective is not to promote one lab or another. Our objective is to give the consumer confidence that the product, a grading report, they have purchased when they buy a diamond can be relied upon,” JAA executive director Amanda Hunter added.
According to the JAA, the DCLA elected not to make a submission addressing the JAA’s full selection criteria. It had also not responded to Jeweller’s invitation to comment by the time of publication.
In addition, the NIAC’s review resulted in the approval of three more local laboratories: the Australian Diamond Grading Laboratory, Scientific Gem Testing Laboratories and the Independent Gemmological Laboratory.
No New Zealand-based laboratories have been endorsed.
The JAA developed the list of recommended laboratories in response to the controversy surrounding the over-grading of diamonds. The issue attracted international attention in September last year when online diamond trading platform RapNet announced it would no longer list reports from European Grading Laboratories.
The revised list of eight laboratories – which is subject to further changes by the JAA – is available at www.jaa.com.au.
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