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DREAMS MADE OF DIAMONDS
By LEVON SEVUNTS
Montreal Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Dreams+made+diamonds/6647069/story.html
May 18 2012
QC, Canada
As he gently pressed an amber-hot diamond to a rapidly spinning
polishing wheel at an upstart diamond processing plant set right in
the heart of downtown, Gevorg Mkhitaryan said he still remembers his
first breath of Canadian air.
"It was minus 61 degrees when we landed in Yellowknife in 2001,
it took my breath away," Mkhitaryan said, taking a brief moment to
inspect the diamond with a powerful magnifying glass, "but I loved it.
It was beautiful and so new to me."
Mkhitaryan was part of a group of about 60 Armenian diamond cutters
and polishers who were brought to the Northwest Territories to work
in Yellowknife's nascent diamond processing industry.
Under Soviet rule, Armenia had become one of the USSR's main diamond
processing centres and had developed world-class expertise in diamond
cutting and polishing. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
the quake-ravaged and worn-torn Armenia fell on hard economic times.
With their skills in high demand everywhere from Botswana to Canada,
Armenian diamond cutters joined the mass exodus of skilled workers
from Armenia, as almost one-third of the country's population emigrated
in search of better living conditions.
Mkhitaryan worked in Yellowknife for two years but in 2003 he returned
to Armenia to get married.
Then in 2006, Canada called again. He and 12 other Armenian diamond
cutters were invited to work at a diamond processing plant in Matane,
a small town on the Gaspe Peninsula that was hoping to become the
province's diamond processing capital.
Matane's diamond dreams vanished in the aftermath of the 2008 financial
crisis that devastated parts of the diamond processing industry. The
Diarough plant where Mkhitaryan was working shut down in 2009, and
he moved his wife and his newborn daughter to Montreal.
Today, he's one of the five co-owners of Melisende Diamonds Ltd.,
a small diamond polishing operation that opened in 2010 with big
dreams of becoming a major player in Canada's emerging diamond
processing industry.
"We want to grow, we want to expand," Mkhitaryan, 35, said, squinting
into the magnifying glass again.
It's an industry where big dreams have been dashed many times before.
Canada is a relative newcomer to diamond mining. The first diamond
deposits were discovered near Lac de Gras in the Northwest Territories
by two enterprising geologists, Stewart Blusson and Chuck Fipke,
in 1991.
Diamond production at BHP Billiton's Ekati Mine on Lac de Gras, about
300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, started in 1998. In 2003,
Rio Tinto opened its Diavik Mine not far from Ekati. And in 2008, De
Beers opened its first Canadian mine at Snap Lake about 220 kilometres
northeast of Yellowknife.
Ontario joined Canada's diamond club in 2008, when De Beers started
commercial diamond production at its Victor mine, about 90 kilometres
from the First Nations community of Attawapiskat, in northern Ontario.
In less than a decade, Canada was propelled to the diamond mining
major leagues, becoming the world's third-largest producer, by value,
of rough stones, behind Botswana and Russia.
But Canada has had a much harder time creating a viable diamond
processing industry.
>From the very beginning, Ottawa and the government of Northwest
Territories pushed diamond mines to set aside about 10 per cent of
their output for processing in Yellowknife. The idea seemed simple
enough. With all the attention that conflict or so called "blood"
diamonds were getting in the international media and even in Hollywood,
Canadian authorities saw a marketing opportunity in offering "ethical"
Canadian diamonds.
Experts reckoned that some customers were ready to pay up to 10 or 15
per cent more for Canadian produced diamonds, knowing that no blood was
spilled or no child labour was used in their production. The government
of Northwest Territories even came up with a clever marketing gimmick,
a tiny laser-etched polar bear on diamonds produced in Yellowknife.
With no indigenous diamond processing workforce, authorities brought
in experienced foreign cutters and polishers to staff the newly opened
diamond cutting and polishing factories.
Gagik Tamrazyan, Mkhi-
taryan's friend and business partner, was also one of the expert
cutters that were brought to Yellowknife in the early 2000s.
"I came to Yellowknife to teach Canadians how to cut and how to work
with diamonds to get the best yield," Tamrazyan, 39, said over the
din of diamond polishing machines and Armenian pop music blaring from
speakers in the Montreal facility.
At their peak, from 2003 to 2006, the four factories that set had up
shop in Yellowknife's Diamond Row district - Sirius, Arslanyan Cutting
Works, Laurelton and Canada Dene Diamonds - employed about 200 people.
But Tamrazyan said the diamond cutting factories in Yellowknife had a
hard time competing with factories in India and Thailand that operated
at a fraction of the cost.
"The cost of cutting and working in Yellowknife was very high,"
Tamrazyan said. "Spare parts for the machinery came from Armenia and
it took up to three months for them to get to Yellowknife."
Bob Bies, a manager at the Arslanyan Cutting Works, said the factory
owners simply didn't have deep enough pockets to operate in the
cutthroat diamond business, where they had to pay up mining companies
millions in advance while it took them up to six months to be paid
by their customers.
One by one, the diamond processing plants in Yellowknife shut down,
leaving dozens of highly qualified diamond cutters without jobs.
Today, only one facility operated by Crossworks Manufacturing of
Vancouver, B.C., with barely a dozen Vietnamese workers, continues
cutting and polishing diamonds in Yellowknife.
Crossworks has a much bigger facility in Sudbury where it processes
rough diamonds from the Victor Mine.
Thanks to an agreement negotiated between the Ontario government,
De Beers Canada and the Diamond Trading Company, the marketing and
distribution arm of De Beers, Crossworks receives up to 10 per cent
of the Victor Mine rough diamond output.
And that's the model Harry Ohanessian, president of Melisende Diamonds,
wants the government of Quebec to replicate when the Renard Mine in
the James Bay region becomes operational in 2015.
"The idea is to get rough diamonds from our Quebec mine and to
have them cut here in Quebec, as they have done it in the Northwest
Territories and Ontario," Ohanessian said.
Renard is owned by the Vancouver-based Stornoway Diamond Corp. and
the province, which holds a 37-per-cent stake in the mine. The mine
is a key part of Premier Jean Charest's Plan Nord project for the
development of northern Quebec. The province is also planning to
spend $330 million to extend Route 167 to allow all-season access to
the mine via Cree communities of Chibougamau and Mistissini.
Nicola Begin, a spokesperson for the provincial Natural Resources
Department, said as part of its mineral strategy the province, too,
wants to see 10 per cent of rough diamonds produced by Renard set
aside for processing in Quebec.
However, when contacted to comment on this issue, Matt Manson, the
president and CEO of Stornoway Diamond Corp., declined to commit to
any numbers.
"We are focused on the financing and development of the mine itself,
which for us comes first," Manson wrote in a terse email.
Ohanessian, 40, said he believes there is still a lot of demand for
Canadian diamonds and he intends to hire the best diamond cutters
from Northwest Territories and Matane plants to not only work at
the Montreal facility but also to train a new generation of diamond
cutters.
"At this moment we have six cutters and one bruter (bruting is the
process of grinding the rough diamond to give it its outline),"
Ohanessian said. "But when the Renard Mine opens up and, hopefully,
the natural resources ministry insists on keeping 10 per cent or any
percentage of diamonds in Quebec, we will definitely increase those
numbers to 18 to 24 cutters."
These are well-paying jobs, Ohanessian noted, with experienced cutters
making $50,000 to $60,000 a year.
He said he'd also like to see Quebec develop its own certification
process to certify diamonds produced in the province and create a
distinct marketing logo similar to the polar bear logo etched on
Northwest Territories diamonds.
"We have also invented a new round diamond cut, which will be even
more brilliant than the HCA (Holloway Cut Advisor) round brilliant
cut," Ohanessian said.
For now, he and his partners buy their stones from Brazil and Africa.
Each stone they cut is then sent to New York for certification by
the Gemological Institute of America.
Once the stones return with their GIA certificates, they're sold to
jewellers who put them in engagement rings, earrings, bracelets and
necklaces, or whatever else their customers fancy.
By having some of the best cutters in the business, Melisende can
compete with the lower-paid diamond cutters in India or Thailand,
he said.
"It's very simple, in polished diamonds the value of the diamond is
not in labour, it's in the cut," Ohanessian said.
The price of a diamond cut to an "excellent" grade according to GIA
classification could be thousands of dollars higher than the price
of a similar diamond cut to a "good" grade, more than making up the
difference in wages paid to diamond cutters in India vs. Canada,
Ohanessian said.
For Mkhitaryan every rough stone that ends up on his polishing table
is a creative challenge.
"I love this job, I love seeing the light play in the stone and working
the stone, realizing that thanks to my hands and eyes I can achieve
an almost perfect symmetry, I love giving the diamond its sparkle,"
Mkhitaryan said brushing the stone against a special leather bracelet
on his wrist to take off the grime from the polishing wheel.
"You can't achieve that beauty if you don't have the skill, if your
hands and eyes don't work together. And I love the creative aspect
of it, coming up with new shapes and designs."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
By LEVON SEVUNTS
Montreal Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Dreams+made+diamonds/6647069/story.html
May 18 2012
QC, Canada
As he gently pressed an amber-hot diamond to a rapidly spinning
polishing wheel at an upstart diamond processing plant set right in
the heart of downtown, Gevorg Mkhitaryan said he still remembers his
first breath of Canadian air.
"It was minus 61 degrees when we landed in Yellowknife in 2001,
it took my breath away," Mkhitaryan said, taking a brief moment to
inspect the diamond with a powerful magnifying glass, "but I loved it.
It was beautiful and so new to me."
Mkhitaryan was part of a group of about 60 Armenian diamond cutters
and polishers who were brought to the Northwest Territories to work
in Yellowknife's nascent diamond processing industry.
Under Soviet rule, Armenia had become one of the USSR's main diamond
processing centres and had developed world-class expertise in diamond
cutting and polishing. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
the quake-ravaged and worn-torn Armenia fell on hard economic times.
With their skills in high demand everywhere from Botswana to Canada,
Armenian diamond cutters joined the mass exodus of skilled workers
from Armenia, as almost one-third of the country's population emigrated
in search of better living conditions.
Mkhitaryan worked in Yellowknife for two years but in 2003 he returned
to Armenia to get married.
Then in 2006, Canada called again. He and 12 other Armenian diamond
cutters were invited to work at a diamond processing plant in Matane,
a small town on the Gaspe Peninsula that was hoping to become the
province's diamond processing capital.
Matane's diamond dreams vanished in the aftermath of the 2008 financial
crisis that devastated parts of the diamond processing industry. The
Diarough plant where Mkhitaryan was working shut down in 2009, and
he moved his wife and his newborn daughter to Montreal.
Today, he's one of the five co-owners of Melisende Diamonds Ltd.,
a small diamond polishing operation that opened in 2010 with big
dreams of becoming a major player in Canada's emerging diamond
processing industry.
"We want to grow, we want to expand," Mkhitaryan, 35, said, squinting
into the magnifying glass again.
It's an industry where big dreams have been dashed many times before.
Canada is a relative newcomer to diamond mining. The first diamond
deposits were discovered near Lac de Gras in the Northwest Territories
by two enterprising geologists, Stewart Blusson and Chuck Fipke,
in 1991.
Diamond production at BHP Billiton's Ekati Mine on Lac de Gras, about
300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, started in 1998. In 2003,
Rio Tinto opened its Diavik Mine not far from Ekati. And in 2008, De
Beers opened its first Canadian mine at Snap Lake about 220 kilometres
northeast of Yellowknife.
Ontario joined Canada's diamond club in 2008, when De Beers started
commercial diamond production at its Victor mine, about 90 kilometres
from the First Nations community of Attawapiskat, in northern Ontario.
In less than a decade, Canada was propelled to the diamond mining
major leagues, becoming the world's third-largest producer, by value,
of rough stones, behind Botswana and Russia.
But Canada has had a much harder time creating a viable diamond
processing industry.
>From the very beginning, Ottawa and the government of Northwest
Territories pushed diamond mines to set aside about 10 per cent of
their output for processing in Yellowknife. The idea seemed simple
enough. With all the attention that conflict or so called "blood"
diamonds were getting in the international media and even in Hollywood,
Canadian authorities saw a marketing opportunity in offering "ethical"
Canadian diamonds.
Experts reckoned that some customers were ready to pay up to 10 or 15
per cent more for Canadian produced diamonds, knowing that no blood was
spilled or no child labour was used in their production. The government
of Northwest Territories even came up with a clever marketing gimmick,
a tiny laser-etched polar bear on diamonds produced in Yellowknife.
With no indigenous diamond processing workforce, authorities brought
in experienced foreign cutters and polishers to staff the newly opened
diamond cutting and polishing factories.
Gagik Tamrazyan, Mkhi-
taryan's friend and business partner, was also one of the expert
cutters that were brought to Yellowknife in the early 2000s.
"I came to Yellowknife to teach Canadians how to cut and how to work
with diamonds to get the best yield," Tamrazyan, 39, said over the
din of diamond polishing machines and Armenian pop music blaring from
speakers in the Montreal facility.
At their peak, from 2003 to 2006, the four factories that set had up
shop in Yellowknife's Diamond Row district - Sirius, Arslanyan Cutting
Works, Laurelton and Canada Dene Diamonds - employed about 200 people.
But Tamrazyan said the diamond cutting factories in Yellowknife had a
hard time competing with factories in India and Thailand that operated
at a fraction of the cost.
"The cost of cutting and working in Yellowknife was very high,"
Tamrazyan said. "Spare parts for the machinery came from Armenia and
it took up to three months for them to get to Yellowknife."
Bob Bies, a manager at the Arslanyan Cutting Works, said the factory
owners simply didn't have deep enough pockets to operate in the
cutthroat diamond business, where they had to pay up mining companies
millions in advance while it took them up to six months to be paid
by their customers.
One by one, the diamond processing plants in Yellowknife shut down,
leaving dozens of highly qualified diamond cutters without jobs.
Today, only one facility operated by Crossworks Manufacturing of
Vancouver, B.C., with barely a dozen Vietnamese workers, continues
cutting and polishing diamonds in Yellowknife.
Crossworks has a much bigger facility in Sudbury where it processes
rough diamonds from the Victor Mine.
Thanks to an agreement negotiated between the Ontario government,
De Beers Canada and the Diamond Trading Company, the marketing and
distribution arm of De Beers, Crossworks receives up to 10 per cent
of the Victor Mine rough diamond output.
And that's the model Harry Ohanessian, president of Melisende Diamonds,
wants the government of Quebec to replicate when the Renard Mine in
the James Bay region becomes operational in 2015.
"The idea is to get rough diamonds from our Quebec mine and to
have them cut here in Quebec, as they have done it in the Northwest
Territories and Ontario," Ohanessian said.
Renard is owned by the Vancouver-based Stornoway Diamond Corp. and
the province, which holds a 37-per-cent stake in the mine. The mine
is a key part of Premier Jean Charest's Plan Nord project for the
development of northern Quebec. The province is also planning to
spend $330 million to extend Route 167 to allow all-season access to
the mine via Cree communities of Chibougamau and Mistissini.
Nicola Begin, a spokesperson for the provincial Natural Resources
Department, said as part of its mineral strategy the province, too,
wants to see 10 per cent of rough diamonds produced by Renard set
aside for processing in Quebec.
However, when contacted to comment on this issue, Matt Manson, the
president and CEO of Stornoway Diamond Corp., declined to commit to
any numbers.
"We are focused on the financing and development of the mine itself,
which for us comes first," Manson wrote in a terse email.
Ohanessian, 40, said he believes there is still a lot of demand for
Canadian diamonds and he intends to hire the best diamond cutters
from Northwest Territories and Matane plants to not only work at
the Montreal facility but also to train a new generation of diamond
cutters.
"At this moment we have six cutters and one bruter (bruting is the
process of grinding the rough diamond to give it its outline),"
Ohanessian said. "But when the Renard Mine opens up and, hopefully,
the natural resources ministry insists on keeping 10 per cent or any
percentage of diamonds in Quebec, we will definitely increase those
numbers to 18 to 24 cutters."
These are well-paying jobs, Ohanessian noted, with experienced cutters
making $50,000 to $60,000 a year.
He said he'd also like to see Quebec develop its own certification
process to certify diamonds produced in the province and create a
distinct marketing logo similar to the polar bear logo etched on
Northwest Territories diamonds.
"We have also invented a new round diamond cut, which will be even
more brilliant than the HCA (Holloway Cut Advisor) round brilliant
cut," Ohanessian said.
For now, he and his partners buy their stones from Brazil and Africa.
Each stone they cut is then sent to New York for certification by
the Gemological Institute of America.
Once the stones return with their GIA certificates, they're sold to
jewellers who put them in engagement rings, earrings, bracelets and
necklaces, or whatever else their customers fancy.
By having some of the best cutters in the business, Melisende can
compete with the lower-paid diamond cutters in India or Thailand,
he said.
"It's very simple, in polished diamonds the value of the diamond is
not in labour, it's in the cut," Ohanessian said.
The price of a diamond cut to an "excellent" grade according to GIA
classification could be thousands of dollars higher than the price
of a similar diamond cut to a "good" grade, more than making up the
difference in wages paid to diamond cutters in India vs. Canada,
Ohanessian said.
For Mkhitaryan every rough stone that ends up on his polishing table
is a creative challenge.
"I love this job, I love seeing the light play in the stone and working
the stone, realizing that thanks to my hands and eyes I can achieve
an almost perfect symmetry, I love giving the diamond its sparkle,"
Mkhitaryan said brushing the stone against a special leather bracelet
on his wrist to take off the grime from the polishing wheel.
"You can't achieve that beauty if you don't have the skill, if your
hands and eyes don't work together. And I love the creative aspect
of it, coming up with new shapes and designs."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress