The world-renowned century old Diamond Street is now closing its doors! Related to Russia? Location | Diamond | Russia
The Belgian city of Antwerp, known as the "Capital of Diamonds" in Europe, boasts strong diamond cutting and grinding technology and over 500 years of diamond processing history. It is a world-renowned diamond processing and trading center. And the famous Diamond Street in the area - Hovenis Street - is the pride of Antwerp. However, recently, the diamond industry here has been affected by Western sanctions against Russia.
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Belgium: The world-renowned century old Diamond Street is now closing its doors
CCTV reporter Song Liang: I am currently in the famous Diamond Street in Europe, where road construction is underway and it looks a bit dirty and messy. There are four diamond exchanges on this street, which is only over 100 meters long, and diamond transactions worth billions of dollars are completed here every year. At its peak, there were nearly 2000 companies on this street. However, to this day, we have noticed some changes, and now we can see signs for renting out houses every few steps we take.
Why is the Diamond Street, which used to be a place where every inch of land was precious and a house was hard to find, now filled with rental information? The front desk reporter arrived at Diamond Square, located in the core area of Diamond Street, and contacted the owner, Philip Schwartz.
Philip showed the reporter several vacant rooms, ranging from 20 square meters to 120 square meters. He said that there are currently around 30 vacant offices in the entire building, most of which have been moved out in the past year or two.
The Antwerp World Diamond Center, located diagonally opposite the Diamond Square, is the official representative of the Belgian diamond industry. The former chief representative of the center for the Chinese market told reporters that there are many companies moving away like this.
Jiang Jun, former chief representative of the Chinese market at the World Diamond Center in Antwerp, Belgium: A very large Indian client who is the largest buyer of Russian diamond mines. If Russian diamonds are really sanctioned, they cannot afford to lose. If there were no Russian diamonds, it would be like cooking without rice, so they were very anxious and had already left. This is just an example.
Sanctions against Russia trigger panic, capital continues to flee Europe
Russia is one of the countries with the largest diamond production in the world and has the largest diamond mining and processing enterprise in the world. Nearly 40% of diamond transactions in Belgium come from Russian diamonds, as many companies have chosen to leave Europe due to a series of EU sanctions against Russia.
The withdrawal of diamond dealers is not an individual case. It is obvious from the data chart of the National Bank of Belgium that, compared with 2020 and 2021, after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, Belgian capital will have a large net outflow for a long time, and the market sentiment will panic. The withdrawal of diamond traders has become a microcosm of the industry's capital flight from Belgium and even Europe.
