DTC issues reminder for submission deadline for CPQs

The Diamond Trading Company (DTC) is reminding all applicants for the DTC’s 2012-2015 Supplier of Choice contract period that one week is left to submit their completed Contract Proposal Questionnaires (CPQs), and also that all CPQs must be submitted via the DTC’s newsightholdercontract.com website by 23.59 (BST) on 7th July 2011, for them to be considered eligible. This deadline applies to CPQs for supply contracts in London, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia and for Canadian supply contracts.

Varda Shine, CEO of DTC, said: “We have had a lot of interest in the new Sightholder contract and we are confident that the new Sightholder list we hope to announce in December will comprise diamond companies which are not only the best businesses in the segments of the market they serve, but are also committed - as we are – to living up to diamonds”.

The completed CPQs will be automatically routed first to the Supplier of Choice Ombudsman who will review all CPQs to ensure that they do not contain excessive confidential information, which, if any, will be removed from the CPQs by the Ombudsman before they are passed to the DTC for scoring.

The scoring will be undertaken by a team of expert assessors from the DTC, against a set of objective performance benchmarks that underpin the Sightholder Criteria. These scores will later be moderated by the DTC’s senior executive panel to ensure all assessors have taken a fair and consistent approach. It is anticipated that the DTC will announce the 2012-2015 Sightholder list in December 2011.

“The assessment criteria ensure that qualifying Sightholders operate to the highest professional standards and are best able to add sustainable value to, and drive demand for, the rough diamonds we sell”, Ms. Shine added.