Man-made gems are reshaping the $89 billion global diamond jewellery market, especially in the west Indian city of Surat where 90 percent of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished.In Smit Patel’s gleaming lab, technicians drop crystal diamond “seed” slices into reactors mimicking the extreme pressure far underground.

“Once the customer sees it for herself, they are sold. I believe this is the future,” said Patel, director of Greenlab Diamonds and the third generation of his family to deal in diamonds.From seed to ring-ready jewels, his team takes less than eight weeks to produce a diamond virtually indistinguishable from a mined gem.”It’s the same product, it’s the same chemical, the same optical properties,” Patel said.

Gas, heat, pressure

Lab-grown diamond exports…