Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 27/99) - Call it a fact-finding mission.

Israeli diamond industry representatives were in Yellowknife this week learning more about the world's newest diamond producer.

"I hope we have a good future, either by opening factories (here) or buying rough diamonds," Zvi Shur, Israeli Diamond Manufacturers Association general manager, said.

"We might like to open a diamond-manufacturing firm (in the NWT)."

Shur said any effort to set up a cutting and polishing plant in the NWT would naturally be a joint-venture.

Shur, a former brigadier general in the Israeli army, has been the association's general manager since 1983.

He also said it may be too late to buy rough diamonds from BHP -- BHP already has rough diamond marketing arrangements -- but there are other possible opportunities, Diavik, for example. Shur, here with Israeli Diamond Controller Udi Sheintal, the state's top diamond regulator, spoke at a Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce luncheon Wednesday. Israel buys 50 per cent of the world's rough diamonds by value.

The state's diamond industry employs about 4,000 people directly at 400 factories. Add indirect jobs and the number of Israelis who earn their living off the industry numbers about 17,000, Shur estimated.

In 1998, Israel had a net export of $3.6 billion worth of polished stones (3.5 million carats at $1,049 per carat). All figures are in US dollars. Israel, which has a 63-year-old diamond industry business, is now concentrating on a specific size range of rough stones to cut and polish. Israeli firms focus on a range of diamonds which are economically viable to cut and polish given world manufacturing conditions.

The rough diamonds Israeli firms cut and polish are of similar size to those made available by BHP in the NWT.