Alrosa partners with De Beers’ Blockchain-based Tracr system

By Swati Kishore

Two of the world’s largest diamond producing companies, London based-De Beers and Russia-based Alrosa, are joining hands together to test a Blockchain-based platform for the purpose of tracking assets.

De Beers is the world’s leading diamond company, while the Russian Alrosa only comes next to the diamond-giant being the world’s second largest diamond manufacturer. The two companies announced on October 29, 2018, that they are jointly partaking in the Blockchain pilot called Tracr. The pilot aims to determine the provenance of diamonds and track them through the supply chain- from production, to their retailing location. The press release by the diamond giant, Alrosa, stated that the system is designed such that trade merchants as well as customers can conveniently track the provenance of a diamond and confirm its authenticity.

As per the press release, the Tracr tracking system  is especially focused on consumer satisfaction as it endeavours to give consumers the satisfaction that their purchased diamonds are conflict free as well as original. The CEO of Alrosa, Sergey Ivanov, elaborated that the development of the diamond market in these times is very much dependent on the traceability of the precious stone. Ivanon further added:

“It helps to ensure consumer confidence and fill information gaps, enabling people to enjoy the product without any doubts about ethical issues or undisclosed synthetics. Alrosa is glad to participate in testing Tracr, along with other market solutions. We believe tracing requires industry cooperation and complementation for the sake of a common goal.”

The CEO of De Beers, Bruce Cleaver, seconded his colleague’s opinion by mentioning that the volume of diamonds tracked is beneficial to the development of their industry. He added:

“Having a critical level of production on the platform will deliver significant benefits for consumers and diamond industry participants.”

The initial announcement of trialing the Blockchain platform was made last year by De Beers. Cleaver had announced that the distributed ledger technology of Blockchain will serve as a secure digital register to store information about the diamonds produced by them and across the supply chain.