Russia's top diamond producer Alrosa is in talks with Tiffany & Co on the supply of small-sized rough diamonds of premium colors, Alrosa CEO Sergei Ivanov has said.
"We have a long-standing good relationship with Tiffany. They value and have been buying Russian diamonds of a certain range," Ivanov was quoted by TASS news agency as saying on Friday.
"They have additional needs, so we are in talks with them on premium colors and not just small-sized raw materials. These are diamonds of small sizes, but of very high quality," he said.
Ivanov did not mention the value of a possible contract, but said that it is "not a major one."
Diamonds, with different colors, like pink, blue, orange, green and violet, are extremely rare and usually sold at premium prices.
Alrosa mines diamonds in the Russian Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and the Arkhangelsk Region. Last year it produced 36.7 million carats of rough diamonds and its revenue from sales of diamond products amounted to 300 billion rubles (4.63 billion U.S. dollars).
After a series of one-off supply deals with Laurelton Diamonds, a subsidiary of Tiffany & Co, Alrosa signed in 2012 a long-term supply contract with it, Alrosa said on its website. It did not disclose details of the deals.
