The buying group announced plans for its fourth Diamond Safari to Botswana at the International Jewellery Fair (IJF) in Sydney last month.
The excursion, scheduled for March 2017, will see the organisation take approximately 25 members to the Jwaneng diamond mine located near Gaborone, Botswana – believed to be the world’s most profitable diamond mine, having produced an estimated 12 million carats of rough in 2015.
Members will also take part in a tour of the Diamond Trading Company’s (DTC) rough sorting facility in Gaborone as well as a cutting factory owned by a De Beers sightholder.
Those who went on the inaugural Nationwide Diamond Safari in October 2011 were said to have been the first jewellers to ever visit the Jwaneng diamond mine; the buying group organised a similar trip in March 2013 and March 2015.
According to Nationwide, the group attending next year’s trip would see “significant” changes and increased activity in the factories as a result of DTC relocating its sights – where sightholders obtain their allocation of rough diamonds – from London to Gaborone in 2013.
Business benefits
Brent Morrison, of Petersens Jewellers in Christchurch, New Zealand, has attended the Nationwide Diamond Safaris in the past and said one of the benefits of the trip was meeting likeminded people.
"You are meeting fellow jewellers who have a good knowledge of the diamond industry as well as the lifetime experience of getting to see a diamond mine,” he explained.
"I can now say I have been to the world's largest diamond mine, I have seen the diamonds being sorted and I can pass that knowledge to the consumer. Some of them are in awe of the experience."
Morrison added that retailers who were able to communicate to customers that they had travelled internationally to see how stones were sourced “enforced” the idea that they were knowledgeable about diamonds.
After Botswana, the group will visit South Africa before joining fellow members on one of the buying group’s regular diamond buying trips in Antwerp, Belgium.
International trips
Nationwide has also announced that further international trips would be organised over the next two years.
The buying group’s annual conference will take place in Fiji for the third time from 9 to 11 June 2017, having previously been chosen in 2008 and 2011.
A discussion about jewellery brands at the recent IJF will be repeated and expanded to include watch brands at the conference following requests from members.
More details will be announced in the coming months.
In addition, Nationwide will take more than 100 members on a biennial overseas cruise in mid-May, 2018.
The destinations were revealed as Prague, Nuremburg, Roth, Regensburg, Passau, Vienna and Budapest. Again, there would be an optional add-on of joining the group’s Antwerp contingent.
Nationwide Jewellers is Australasia’s largest jewellery buying group with a membership consisting of more than 420 independent retailers across Australia and New Zealand.
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