De Beers, the world's largest diamond producer, has raised the prices of some rough diamonds by around 10% to benefit from a strong recovery in diamond demand.

After coming to a standstill at the beginning of the pandemic last year, the global diamond industry has rapidly recovered over the past six months. This created an opportunity for the biggest producers to quickly raise prices. De Beers has been raising prices since the end of last year, and has now returned to pre-COVID-19 levels. In the first three sales cycles of the year, the company's rough diamond sales exceeded $1.6 billion, the highest level since 2018.

According to people familiar with the matter, the company raised the prices of some rough diamonds over 2 carats by about 10% this week, and the prices of other valuable products also increased by the number of units. At the same time, the company also raised the price of some small diamonds.

The speed and strength of the recovery in the diamond industry came as a surprise to many industry insiders. At the beginning of this year, De Beers and Russia's Alrosa, the two largest diamond miners, had excess inventory of the billions of dollars they had accumulated last year, but sold almost all of that inventory, as well as the diamonds they mined, in the first quarter.