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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The subsidiary of a major Canadian diamond distributor in North America has opened a diamond-polishing and cutting plant in the heart of downtown Yellowknife that handles diamonds from De Beers Canada's Snap Lake mine.

Crossworks Manufacturing, a member of the HRA Group of Companies, brought its latest plant online last July but will officially herald its arrival during a grand opening celebration Monday afternoon.

Hung Pham works inside HRA' new Yellowknife diamond-polishing plant in the Cascom building. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

Yellowknife mayor Gord Van Tighem and other dignitaries are set to attend.

The 2,000-square foot plant – located on one side of the building that also houses Cascom – employs 11 full-time workers. Nine are experienced diamond polishers and cutters Crossworks brought over from the company's 350-person plant in Vietnam. The remaining two were recruited locally and have received training from the Vietnamese staff.

"Our corporate policy is to ensure that the diamond factory maintains profitability at all times, and so when we can hire local, we prefer to hire local," said Itay Ariel, chief operating officer of HRA. "However we needed to ensure that the factory was up and running immediately upon its opening. To be able to do that, we needed to bring in some of our experienced diamond polishers and cutters."

Unlike Crossworks' plant in Vancouver – which, since its opening in 2000, has polished diamonds from BHP Billiton's Ekati Diamond Mine and is fully robotic – most of the work at the Yellowknife plant is done by hand. Plans are in place to make it more automated in 2009 but not at the cost of staff.

"It will not mean a reduction of staff," said Dylan Dix, worldwide marketing director for HRA. "It will probably increase our staff and allow us to make (the factory) more economically viable."

The plant currently only works on 10 shipments of diamonds from Snap Lake per year. The diamonds are flown into Yellowknife via armoured carrier for the sake of security and speed.

But HRA already has expansion on the brain. The company has scheduled meetings with Rio Tinto, owner of the Diavik Diamond Mine, to discuss the possibility of also taking on diamonds from the Diavik mine. Diavik allocations are presently handled by HRA at its plant in Antwerp, Belgium.

"We're very excited to be a part of Yellowknife and to be a part of the Canadian diamond story," said Ariel.

Despite news that De Beers will lay off 105 contract miners by the end of the year due to decreased demand for diamonds this holiday season, Ariel is positive about the future of the industry.

"The entire globe is moving into a recessionary period," said Ariel. "However, that will pass and diamonds will continue to be the gift of choice in terms of the gift of love.

"We strongly believe that there is a healthy future for the diamond industry, and that is why we've invested quite a bit of funds into the Yellowknife factory."

"It shows that other worldwide companies see Yellowknife as a potential marketplace," said Jon Jaque, manager of Cascom, about the plant opening next door.

Van Tighem said he is especially excited at the prospect of incorporating the plant into a tour of Yellowknife as the diamond capital of Canada, an idea Dix said HRA is open to in the future.

"Everybody that comes here wants to see a diamond mine or they want to see somebody working with diamonds," he said. "We can only do it to a very restricted number of people because of security and because of distance in the case of the mines.

"This is another step where people can actually see what happens after they come out of the ground and get transformed into something that becomes important in someone's life later on."