HRD Antwerp Opens Mumbai Education Centre

HRD Antwerp opened its Education Centre in Mumbai in the same premises as its office today. The center had the latest equipment and has a lot of interesting courses lined up apart from diamonds. “We have already trained a few retailers out here and we have plenty of interesting courses for our clients,” said Vidhya Mazumdar, Head – Education India.

Also present at the event were Ari Epstein, Chairman of the Board HRD Antwerp and Ravi Chhabria, Managing Director, India. Appreciating the brand new center, Ari said, “I feel this is just the beginning for HRD Antwerp in India and the future looks extremely bright for us here, thanks to India. More than 80 per cent of our bilateral trades are based on diamonds and the work here is equally important for both the Indian and Belgian economy.”

HRD Antwerp, Europe’s leading authority in diamond certification, launched its new ID card in October 2017 at its HQ in the Antwerp Diamond District. “The ID CARD is a highly affordable, new type of grading report for diamonds that weigh between 0.08 and 0.998cts. With this new product, we aim to bring a comprehensive solution to one of the diamond market’s main current challenges: ensuring confidence in small-sized diamonds. Indeed, 99 per cent of the polished diamonds traded annually in the world are below 0.30ct*, but the overwhelming majority of these diamonds are not graded because the cost of grading them cuts too deeply into their profit margin,” said Michel Janssens, CEO of HRD Antwerp, earlier.

“In the last couple of years, certified diamond business is really going down. The rough prices are going up and certification is becoming very expensive. So we developed a series of machines to reduce the cost of certification. Also of late, there is a major security threat – people are copying inscriptions. All ID cards are sealed and have laser inscriptions,” said Mehmet Can Özdemir, CEO, HRD Middle East.