Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 539 Diamond Processing
After the museum tour, Liang En and the others didn't arrange other travel plans, but went directly back to the hotel.According to the previous plan, they will go to Mr. Varma's diamond processing factory to see if they have any inspiration.

Diamonds have a long history as beautiful objects of desire.In the first century AD, the Roman naturalist Pliny said: "Diamonds are the most valuable, not only precious stones, but also unique things in the world."

Although it is said that when diamonds are mentioned now, people will think of African countries rich in diamonds such as South Africa and Sierra Leone. If they are interested in this industry, they may also mention newer producing areas such as Canada, Russia or Brazil.

But the oldest diamonds come from India. From 800 BC to the mid-18th century, India has been the only place where diamonds were produced, and it also produced famous large diamonds like the Mount of Light.

The ancient Indians divided the color of diamonds into four grades and named them according to India's unique caste system: colorless diamonds are called "Brahmans"; light red diamonds are called "Kshatriya"; Vaishya"; the gray diamond is called "Shudra".

Diamonds have been described and recorded in Indian literature in the fourth century BC. Archaeological research has found that Indians have used diamonds as tools to carve beads of other gemstones in the fourth century BC.

Like the ancient Silk Road, India also had a trade route connecting India and the Western world, known as the Diamond Road in the research of historians.

The Diamond Road actually consists of two routes. One is the land route, from India to Rome via present-day Iran and Turkey;

The diamonds that appeared in the Roman Empire from the [-]st to the [-]rd century AD were transported from India through these two "diamond roads", but with the demise of the Roman Empire, the final destination of this road became Persia.

However, the biggest problem with Indian diamond mines is that the output is too small. Even if the annual output was about 17-5 carats at the peak in the 10th century, only a small part of them reached gem grade.

Since then, diamond production has dropped rapidly. Between 1725 and 1730, only 2000-5000 carats of diamonds were transported from India to Europe each year, which severely hit the European diamond industry.

不过在1730年的时候巴西发现了钻石，并在19世纪50年代达到顶峰，年产量30万克拉以上，直到1880年下降到5000克拉。

But at this time, the most important diamond producing area in modern society was discovered in Africa. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the annual output of diamond mines near Kimberley City alone was as high as 2000-3000 million carats.

Since then, diamonds are no longer a luxury exclusive to princes and nobles, but have entered thousands of households. However, in this era, India is still an important part of the diamond industry.

Nowadays, many people who buy and wear diamonds don’t think about such a question: African miners dig rough diamonds, and rich people all over the world buy diamonds. Who completes the processing link?The answer is India!

Today, the port cities of Surat and Mumbai in western India have become global diamond processing centers. In the most extreme years, they even accounted for 92% of the global diamond processing share.

Although Huaxia has gradually developed this business in the past few years, the share has not been able to expand too much due to labor costs, and India still firmly occupies the top spot in the world's diamond processing share.

Now there are four major diamond processing centers in the world, small particle diamond processing center - India Surat, Mumbai; large particle diamond processing center - New York, USA; exquisite diamond processing city - Antwerp, Belgium; exquisite small diamond processing center - — Tel Aviv, Israel.

As a whole, the diamonds processed in India are less effective than those in other places, so the processed diamonds are mainly small diamonds, and the consumers they face are ordinary consumers.

But this does not mean that Indians do not have good goods in their hands. Don't forget the terrible wealth gap in India. It is definitely possible for these rich people to hide some top diamonds.

However, in terms of jewelry design and high-end processing, India is really bad. There are not many masters in this field in India, and this is basically the reason why Mr. Varma specially invited Liang En.

At least Liang En's works can really reach the master level, and this is what he lacks the most now. If he doesn't seize this opportunity, he will be an absolute idiot.

Liang En received a request from Steward Lubzon, expressing the hope that he could help to see if there were any good diamonds in Varma's hands, and if so, he could inform them to discuss the next diamond purchase.

For this kind of luxury company, large diamonds are definitely a rare resource. Now that they can get it through cooperation, if the price is right, they will definitely try to get it.

Surat is more than 200 kilometers north of Mumbai. Because they set off after noon, it was already around 4 pm when they got there.

The first thing to do after arriving on the ground is to eat, because Indians are good at procrastinating all the time required for doing things, so if you don’t eat enough before working, you will definitely be hungry and uncomfortable for a while.

After eating, they drove to a settlement of low-income Surat citizens on the outskirts of the city. After driving along a road several hundred meters long, they came to a large iron gate in front of.

The tall fence, the barbed wire and the watchtower on the fence separated the factory from the surrounding community. Through the gate, a slightly crude factory appeared in front of them.

The reason why it is said to be simple is that the factory houses were obviously not built in the same era, and the paint on the walls of some of the old houses was damaged, and the glass was also broken, which looked a bit bad.

However, those five-story new factory buildings look very good, and they should have been newly built in the past two years.It can also be seen from this that this processing plant has actually been developing all the time, and it is no wonder that the other party has begun to think about expanding its operations.

From the perspective of scale, this should be a very large factory, because there are more than 5000 people in the whole factory, and it is even one of the best in the entire region.

This is also a characteristic of Indian processing, that is, relying on cheap labor costs to play crowd tactics. To give the simplest example, the labor costs of Indians are only about 60% of that of China.

This is also an important reason why China, as the world's largest manufacturing country, cannot defeat the Indians in this regard, because the labor costs of the Indians are too low.

But the current situation has also led to India's advantage in the low-end diamond processing industry and its inability to upgrade the industry. After all, it is basically impossible for this group of illiterate or semi-literate workers to meet the quality requirements of the labor force required for industrial upgrading.

After entering the factory building, everyone took the elevator to the office on the fifth floor. As a rare room with air conditioning, everyone felt cooler after entering the door.

After closing the door of the office, Mr. Varma opened a safe and took out several trays of different sizes, all of which were covered with sparkling diamonds, which looked extremely bright under the light.

(End of this chapter)