Singapore to open world’s first diamond exchange

SDiX is a fully electronic spot commodity exchange which was developed over the past two years and designed to deliver price transparency and liquidity to the market.

SINGAPORE: Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange (SdiX) will launch the world’s first commodities exchange in diamonds here in September.

Vertex Ventures Holdings, a fully-owned venture capital unit of Temasek Holdings, is an investor of SdiX.

In a statement, SDiX said the platform, the first of its kind globally, will use proven exchange technology to create a new marketplace for the global diamond trade.

“It is designed to deliver price transparency and liquidity to the diamond market through a real-time price discovery mechanism, allowing diamonds to be traded as a commodity, thus enabling the creation of a new asset class,” it said.

SDix executive chairman, founder and controlling shareholder, Alain Vandenborre, said SDiX was a fully electronic spot commodity exchange which was developed over the past two years and designed to deliver price transparency and liquidity to the market.

“It will provide a self-regulated marketplace for both diamond and financial traders as well as accredited investors to acquire stones at a market price that is driven by real time transactional data.

“This will result in the homogenisation of diamonds, simplifying the manner in which they are valued and hence allowing them to be traded as a commodity,” he said.

Vertex president and chief executive officer Chua Kee Lock said: “At Vertex, we seek out promising  and transformational technologies and leaders, to build them into global champions.”

The exchange will start with two dedicated physical vaults, one operated by Malca-Amit in Singapore Le Freeport and the other operated by Malca-Amit within the Bharat Diamond Bourse in Mumbai.

– BERNAMA