Three Years on Top

Russia has retained its position as the world's leading country by rough-diamond production value in 2025, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Kimberley Process (KP).

This is Russia's third consecutive year at the top, having first surpassed Botswana in 2023. And it achieved this while contending with sanctions on its goods across both the United States and the European Union, and a weak diamond market — producing, by the KP's framing, nearly double the amount of rough as its closest competitors.

Here are the core figures:

Russia, 2025: 31.5 million carats, $2.72 billion, average $86 per carat

Russia, 2024: 37.3 million carats, $3.34 billion, average $89 per carat

Botswana, 2025: 15.5 million carats, $1.98 billion, average $128 per carat

Botswana, 2024: 18.1 million carats, $1.36 billion, average $75 per carat

Global, 2025: $9.23 billion (down 3%), 98.8 million carats (down 8%)

Total imports slipped 8% by volume; global exports declined 7%. The export dip reflects declines of 1.8% from Russia, 10% from Canada, 41% from Zimbabwe, and 63% from Lesotho.

There is a great deal buried in these numbers — including one figure that is genuinely startling and has been almost entirely overlooked. Let's work through it properly.

The first thing to establish clearly is that Russia's 2025 result, while sufficient to hold the top spot, represents a substantial contraction in absolute terms.

Russia produced 5.8 million fewer carats and earned $620 million less than the previous year. That is not a marginal adjustment — it is a decline of roughly one-sixth by volume and nearly one-fifth by value.

So the accurate characterization is not that Russia had a strong year. It is that Russia had a significantly weaker year and still finished first by a wide margin. Those are different claims, and the distinction matters for understanding the underlying market.

The KP data connects directly to a known corporate decision. Alrosa, Russia's largest miner, paused production at several deposits during the year to save money amid the industry downturn.

This is worth appreciating as a deliberate strategy rather than a failure.

Production pauses are a rational response to weak markets. When rough prices are depressed and inventories are heavy, continuing to mine at full capacity means converting valuable in-ground resources into unsold surface inventory at poor realized prices. Suspending production preserves the resource for a better market while cutting cash operating costs.

It is a supply-discipline decision. Mining companies facing soft demand have two options: produce and accept lower prices, or reduce output and support prices. Alrosa chose the latter at several deposits.

It also explains the volume decline better than sanctions do. A 15.5% volume drop coinciding with announced production pauses is a straightforward causal relationship. The output fell because the company chose to mine less.

The per-carat average fell only 3.4% — from $89 to $86. This is a comparatively modest decline given the market conditions, and it can be read two ways.

Read one: prices held reasonably well. A 3.4% decline in average realized value per carat during a documented industry downturn is not a collapse. It suggests Russian rough retained most of its per-carat value.

Read two: mix effects may be masking price pressure. If production pauses were concentrated at particular deposits, the mix of goods produced would shift. Depending on which deposits paused, the average could be flattered or depressed independently of actual price movements per category.

Without deposit-level detail, both readings remain possible. But the headline observation stands: Russia's per-carat value declined far less than its volume.

The KP release notes Russia achieved this position "even as it faced challenges from sanctions against its goods throughout the US and the European Union."

This deserves careful handling, because it is easy to draw the wrong conclusion.

This is the critical analytical distinction, and missing it leads to confusion.

Sanctions restrict market access. US and EU measures limit the ability of Russian-origin diamonds to enter and be traded within those jurisdictions. They are restrictions on where goods can go and who can handle them.

The KP measures production. These statistics record what came out of the ground and what it was assessed to be worth. They are a measure of extraction, not of successful sale into any particular market.

These are different things. A country can continue producing at scale while facing severe restrictions on where that production can be sold. The KP data tells us Russia mined 31.5 million carats worth $2.72 billion. It does not tell us where those carats ended up, at what realized prices, or through what channels.

Here is a genuinely interesting detail that has been underweighted: Russian carat exports declined only 1.8%.

Set that against a 15.5% decline in production volume.

Production down 15.5%. Exports down 1.8%.

That gap is analytically significant. Several explanations are possible, and they are not mutually exclusive:

Inventory drawdown. If Russia produced substantially less but exported nearly as much, the difference may have come from stockpiles accumulated in prior periods. This would be consistent with a producer that built inventory when markets were weak and moved it as opportunities arose.

Prioritization of export flow. Reduced production may have been managed specifically to protect export volumes, with domestic or held-back allocation absorbing the cut.

Routing continuity. Exports finding their way to non-sanctioning markets at broadly maintained volumes, regardless of the production reduction.

Whichever combination applies, the implication is the same: the reduction in production did not translate proportionally into a reduction in goods reaching the market. For anyone modeling global rough supply, that gap between production decline and export decline is one of the more important observations in this dataset.

What can be said with confidence:

Sanctions restrict access to specific markets. They do not stop extraction. This dataset measures extraction.

Now to the most striking figure in the entire release, and one that has received remarkably little attention.

Look at Botswana's per-carat average across the two years:

That is a 71% increase in average value per carat.

To appreciate how unusual this is, consider the context. This occurred during a weak diamond market, in a year when global rough output value fell 3% and Russia's average per-carat value declined.

Botswana's average per-carat value rose by more than two-thirds.

And note what happened to the totals:

That is one of the most dramatic value-per-carat improvements in recent rough production data, and it demands explanation.

Explanation one: mix shift toward higher-value goods. This is the most likely primary driver, and it connects directly to the operational news. Botswana's production dropped due to shutdowns at the Jwaneng and Orapa deposits.

Jwaneng and Orapa are two of the most significant diamond mines in the world, but they are not identical in the character of their output. If shutdowns disproportionately affected volume-heavy, lower-value production while higher-value production continued, the average per-carat value would rise sharply — purely from composition, without any individual category repricing.

A 14% volume decline paired with a 71% per-carat value increase is very difficult to explain through price movements alone in a weak market. Mix shift is the far more plausible mechanism.

Explanation two: valuation methodology or timing. KP figures rest on production valuations, and changes in what was valued when, or how, can move reported averages. The magnitude here is large enough that methodology deserves consideration.

Explanation three: genuine price strength in specific categories. Botswana's ore bodies are known for producing large, high-quality stones. If the goods produced in 2025 skewed toward categories where natural diamond pricing has held up best — larger, finer stones where lab-grown substitution is weakest — that would support higher realized values.

Set the two leading producers side by side for 2025:

Botswana produced less than half Russia's carats and generated 73% of Russia's value — because its average per-carat value was 49% higher.

This is the fundamental structural difference between the two production profiles, and it has always been true to some degree. Botswana's ore bodies yield fewer but finer stones. Russia's yield more carats at lower average value.

What changed in 2025 is that the gap widened dramatically — from $75 versus $89 in 2024 (Russia ahead) to $128 versus $86 in 2025 (Botswana far ahead). That is a reversal, not just a widening.

Value per carat is the metric that determines profitability, not volume. A producer earning $128 per carat has fundamentally different economics from one earning $86, and the gap compounds across every operational decision — mining cost per carat recovered, processing economics, and the price realization on every parcel sold.

Botswana's position by value is stronger than the ranking suggests. Yes, Russia leads on total production value. But Botswana closed substantial ground: from $1.36 billion to $1.98 billion while Russia fell from $3.34 billion to $2.72 billion. The gap between them narrowed from $1.98 billion to $740 million in a single year.

If Botswana's per-carat improvement proves durable and Russia's volume decline continues, the ranking that has held for three years becomes considerably less secure.

The aggregate figures contain their own instructive divergence.

Volume fell more than twice as fast as value.

If volume declines 8% while value declines only 3%, then global average value per carat rose — by roughly 5%, once compounded.

That is a meaningful and somewhat counterintuitive finding for a year characterized as a downturn. It suggests two things operating together:

Supply discipline is working, at least partially. Producers cutting output — Alrosa's pauses, Botswana's shutdowns — reduced the volume of goods hitting the market. Constrained supply is fundamentally supportive of price. The fact that value fell far less than volume suggests this discipline had a real effect.

Mix shifted toward higher-value goods. The production cuts appear to have fallen disproportionately on volume-heavy, lower-value output. When you remove the cheap carats from the calculation, the average rises.

Global production of 98.8 million carats puts output below the 100 million carat mark. For a sense of scale, global rough production has historically ranged well above that level in stronger years. Falling below 100 million carats reflects the combined effect of:

Some of this is cyclical and reversible. Some — particularly resource depletion at long-running mines — is not.

These figures track the production decline closely, which is expected: less rough produced means less rough moving across borders. The near-alignment of import and export declines with the production decline suggests the trading system processed the reduced supply without major distortion.

The KP attributes the export decline to specific national contractions, and the range is extraordinary:

These are not variations on a theme. They are four different stories.

Already discussed, and the most analytically interesting of the four precisely because it is the smallest. Production down 15.5%, exports down 1.8%. Whatever combination of inventory drawdown and flow prioritization produced that gap, the practical effect is that Russian goods continued reaching markets at close to prior-year volumes despite substantially reduced mining.

A moderate decline. Canada's diamond production comes from a small number of mature Arctic operations, and its output profile is subject to the natural life cycles of those mines — declining grades, pit-to-underground transitions, and eventual depletion.

A 10% decline is consistent with maturing assets and cautious operational management in a weak price environment. Canada's diamonds carry origin value in Western markets, which has generally supported them, but the resource base is finite and aging.

A severe contraction. A decline of this magnitude in a single year points to operational or structural factors rather than market softness alone — production disruptions, processing constraints, resource issues, or policy and operational changes affecting output.

Zimbabwe has been a significant volume producer in recent years, so a 41% export decline removes meaningful carat supply from global flow.

The most dramatic figure in the list. Nearly two-thirds of export volume gone.

Lesotho's production is notable for a specific characteristic: its mines have produced some of the world's most remarkable large, high-quality diamonds. It is a high-value-per-carat, low-volume producer, in the same structural category as Botswana but smaller.

A 63% decline in a producer of that profile likely reflects specific operational circumstances — mine suspensions, processing interruptions, or economic decisions to curtail output during weak pricing. For a small producer, a single mine's status can swing national figures dramatically.

What connects these declines is that almost none of them look like demand-driven contractions. They look like supply-side events: production pauses, mine shutdowns, operational disruptions, and maturing assets.

That distinction matters enormously for anyone forecasting the market. Demand-driven declines signal buyers walking away. Supply-driven declines signal producers withholding — which is a fundamentally more constructive condition, because withheld supply supports prices and can return when conditions improve.

The global data supports this reading: value fell only 3% while volume fell 8%, exactly the pattern you would expect if supply were being deliberately constrained rather than demand collapsing.

Pulling the threads together, several structural conclusions emerge.

Alrosa paused production. Botswana saw shutdowns at Jwaneng and Orapa. Global volume fell 8%. And yet global value fell only 3%, and global average per-carat value rose.

That is the signature of effective supply management. Producers reduced output, and the market rewarded them with better per-carat realization than a volume-maximizing strategy would have delivered.

This is a lesson the diamond industry has learned repeatedly and sometimes forgotten: in a market with weak demand, flooding supply destroys value for everyone. The 2025 data suggests the major producers held that discipline.

The single most important theme in this data is the divergence in per-carat values:

The market is clearly differentiating. Higher-value goods are holding or improving their realization. Volume-heavy, lower-value production is where the pressure sits.

This is entirely consistent with what has been observed elsewhere in the chain: lab-grown competition bites hardest in substitutable middle-market categories, while larger, finer, rarer natural goods retain pricing power grounded in genuine scarcity.

Russia has led for three years. But the trajectory is not favorable:

One more year of similar movement would put the ranking in genuine question. Botswana's per-carat value advantage is now substantial, and if it proves durable, it changes the arithmetic considerably.

Output below 100 million carats reflects more than a weak year. Mature mines are depleting. Grades are declining. Investment in new capacity has been constrained by years of difficult pricing. Some of the volume that has left the market is not coming back.

For the long term, this is arguably the most consequential fact in the dataset. Constrained natural supply against a demand base that has been partially eroded by synthetics creates a market whose future shape is genuinely uncertain — but one in which the scarcity of fine natural goods becomes more pronounced, not less.

Russia led global rough diamond production by value for the third consecutive year in 2025, recording 31.5 million carats worth $2.72 billion at $86 per carat — nearly double its closest competitors by volume, and achieved despite US and EU sanctions and a weak market.

But the more revealing reading requires looking past the ranking.

Russia led while shrinking substantially. Volume down 15.5%, value down 18.6%, driven largely by Alrosa's deliberate production pauses at several deposits — a rational supply-discipline response to a downturn rather than an operational failure. Notably, Russian carat exports fell only 1.8% against that 15.5% production decline, implying inventory drawdown or prioritized export flow that kept goods reaching markets.

Botswana produced the most remarkable number in the dataset. Average value per carat rose from $75 to $128 — a 71% increase — during a weak market, while volume fell 14.4% amid shutdowns at Jwaneng and Orapa. The result: 14% fewer carats generating 46% more value. Botswana now realizes 49% more per carat than Russia, and closed the value gap between the two countries from $1.98 billion to $740 million in a single year.

Globally, volume fell more than twice as fast as value — down 8% to 98.8 million carats against a 3% value decline to $9.23 billion — meaning average per-carat value rose in a year everyone describes as weak. That is supply discipline working, combined with production cuts falling disproportionately on lower-value output.

And the export declines were supply events, not demand events. Russia −1.8%, Canada −10%, Zimbabwe −41%, Lesotho −63%. Production pauses, mine shutdowns, and maturing assets — not buyers walking away.

The picture that emerges is of an industry in which producers held their nerve, restricted supply rather than chasing volume, and were rewarded with better per-carat realization than the headline downturn would suggest. Russia kept the crown. Botswana, quietly, had the better year.