De Beers left London for Botswana, transforming lives and a city

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De Beers left London for Botswana, transforming lives and a city

4:24 CAT | 03 May 2016

De Beers / Employees engaging in discussion at Damtshaa Mine.

A diamond-mining behemoth’s expanded presence here has helped transform this sleepy capital over the past few years, turning it into a hub for a cosmopolitan crowd of gem buyers and upending the lives of dozens of company employees.

De Beers, a unit of Anglo American, surprised the industry by moving its international sales department and a related stone-sorting operation to Gaborone from London in 2012 and 2013.

The move was part of a 10-year sales deal the company struck with the government of Botswana, which supplies 70% of its diamonds.

De Beers’ return to its roots in Southern Africa was a big adjustment for the 80-plus employees it transferred from its offices in a tony London neighbourhood to the scorching heat of Gaborone, a city of about 230,000 on the edge of the Kalahari Desert.

It also was a jolt for the bulk buyers of De Beers’ stones, requiring them to make regular visits to this relative backwater.

“There aren’t that many reasons to come here,” the Lonely Planet travel guide says in its description of the city, a patchwork of monochrome government buildings, shiny new malls and neat suburban homes.

Tracey Skingle, a senior diamond valuator for De Beers, said she has made peace with her new surroundings. “My job came here and I didn’t want to leave it,” she said.

Ms Skingle used to enjoy her roughly 25-minute walk to work from the Waterloo train station with friends when she lived in London.

Now, friends join her every Wednesday on exercise walks to and from the international airport — about a 5-mile round trip from the sprawling new Diamond Technology Park complex here, which is ringed with high fences and security gates.

The $35m relocation included upgrades to the company’s local facilities, which employ hundreds of workers in addition to those relocated from London.

The offices sit on a parched piece of land on the outskirts of Gaborone, which enjoys a reputation for safety and relative efficiency.

Everyone entering and exiting the De Beers offices is searched and ushered through multiple layers of automated security doors.

Inside the complex, Ms Skingle and other employees sort through rough diamonds mined around the world by size, shape, colour and clarity, functions that had been based in London for nearly 80 years.

“It’s like we picked up the process and dropped it in another place,” said Matthew Carrett, an aggregation manager who moved here in 2012.

“Obviously, it’s completely different to London. It’s much more relaxed,” added Mr Carrett, whose department mixes diamonds from De Beers operations world-wide into uniform lots for buyers.

Many of the relocated staff had previously spent time in Africa, which produces about half the world’s diamonds.

Botswana alone accounts for about a quarter of global production, second only to Russia.

Now, it is becoming a major hub for many diamond buyers and other industry specialists.

De Beers hosts 10 private sales a year here, during which as many as 200 elite customers from Israel, China, the US and elsewhere descend on Gaborone each day.

The influx of foreign visitors has altered the city, according to De Beers employees.

Before the company expanded its footprint here, taxis, 3G mobile service, midmarket restaurants and hotels were all relatively rare.

Five years ago, hailing a cab was “mission impossible,” said De Beers CE Philippe Mellier, who still works in London but attends nearly all the company’s private sales, or “sights,” in Gaborone.

“Ten years ago, it was a wasteland,” said Andy Bolton, the company’s senior vice president of the diamond supply chain, who has three children at school in Britain. Now, “there are a lot more malls, a lot more cars on the road”.

In addition, airline traffic to the city has increased 62% since 2010 by one key measure, according to data provider Flightglobal.

On his regular diamond-buying trips to the city, Pintu Dholakia, CEO of Hari Krishna Exports, stays in the 153-room Masa Square Hotel, which opened in 2012.

His Mumbai-based company is among the more than 80 “sightholders” authorised to buy from De Beers.

Still, some local businesses say they have not seen much change since the diamond giant’s arrival.

“The restaurant continues to be busy, but (we) really can’t say there has been any specific change in business related to the De Beers sales offices,” said Sue Witham, owner of Portuguese restaurant Caravela, Mr Mellier’s favourite place here to grab a bite.

While restaurant options in Gaborone still are far fewer than in London, the quiet capital has some distinct advantages.

“Botswana is a beautiful country. I would love to take my family along to the Okavango Delta once, instead of the Antwerp Zoo, for a change,” said Jackie Morsel, a vice-president at Dali Diamond Company, a Belgian sightholder.

Ms Morsel added that there was good kosher food and religious services during sight weeks — to serve the diamond trade’s sizeable Jewish contingent.

But even the happiest De Beers transplants acknowledge that Gaborone is not for avowed city slickers.

Though Botswana is considered to have one of Africa’s better-managed economies, frequent water and electricity shortages have taken a toll on growth, hurt small businesses and generally disrupted everyday life.

“It gets trying at times,” Ms Skingle said with a sigh. “I’ve taken up golf and that takes up a lot of time — especially when you’re bad. You can get through a Saturday quite easily.”

Source: Business Day Live