Diamond Offtake · Africa
Establish a committed buyer
for your diamond production.
OnePiece connects African diamond mine operators and cooperatives with international buyers in Antwerp, Dubai, and Mumbai who will commit to a long-term offtake relationship — consistent pricing, reliable settlement, and a counterparty built for repeat business.
What a diamond offtake agreement means
An offtake agreement is a contractual commitment by a buyer to purchase your entire output — or a defined percentage of it — at a formula price, over a defined term. Typical terms run from one to three years. The buyer commits volume and consistency; the mine commits reliable supply and documentation. Both parties eliminate the uncertainty of parcel-by-parcel negotiation.
For a mine operator, the value of an offtake is clarity: you know who will buy your next 12 or 36 months of production, at what price, under what conditions. You can plan cash flow, service equipment loans, pay workers on schedule. The administrative cost of finding a buyer for every parcel — and the revenue uncertainty when you cannot — disappears.
Pricing under an offtake agreement is typically expressed as a formula rather than a fixed price. Two common structures: a percentage of the prevailing Rapaport rough market reference price for the relevant size and quality category, revised monthly or quarterly; or a fixed USD-per-carat premium or discount to the Antwerp sight price for the closest comparable De Beers rough category. The formula protects both parties against market movements while preserving the buyer's ability to plan and the mine's ability to benefit from upswings.
Why buyers prefer offtake arrangements
For a diamond manufacturer in Surat processing 8,000–15,000 carats per month, consistent supply is worth paying a small premium over spot. The cost of an idle factory — workers on standby, overhead running, production targets missed — exceeds the saving from waiting for cheaper spot parcels. An offtake agreement with a reliable African producer converts an uncertain procurement function into a predictable supply chain.
For buyers with ESG reporting obligations — publicly listed jewellery groups, sovereign wealth-aligned family offices, corporate jewellery accounts — known and documented origin is increasingly a compliance requirement rather than a preference. An offtake with a specific named mine in Botswana or Namibia provides the chain-of-custody narrative their procurement and sustainability reporting requires. Spot purchases from anonymous Antwerp parcels do not.
There is also the friction argument: parcel-by-parcel negotiation is administratively costly. A buyer whose procurement team negotiates, documents, and settles 30–40 separate parcel transactions per year from multiple spot sellers has a much higher transaction cost than one who runs a single quarterly review with an offtake partner and processes a predictable documentation package each month.
The KP compliance framework for offtake
A point that mine operators must understand clearly: an offtake agreement does not substitute for per-shipment Kimberley Process documentation. The existence of a long-term contract with a named international buyer does not change the requirement that each individual parcel shipped under that contract carries its own KP certificate, issued by the KP authority in the country of export.
Under a typical offtake structure, the per-shipment documentation cadence is: KP certificate issued by the national authority (e.g. Ministry of Mines in Botswana, SODIAM in Angola, NamDeb in Namibia) covering that specific parcel's weight, quality description, and declared origin; an independent valuation or mine-head valuation certificate; and a detailed packing list with individual stone or parcel weights. This package accompanies every shipment, regardless of whether it is the third or the thirty-third delivery under the offtake.
Buyers in Antwerp will submit KP certificates to AWDC for verification. Buyers routing through Dubai will process documentation through DMCC. Indian buyers will present documentation to BDB customs. In every case, the per-shipment documentation package is non-negotiable. Mine operators who cannot produce compliant documentation per shipment cannot participate in any legitimate offtake structure, regardless of how well-structured the agreement itself is.
What production scale makes sense for offtake
The honest answer is that offtake is not appropriate for every mine. For operations producing below approximately 500 carats per month, the overhead of a formal offtake agreement — legal drafting, compliance infrastructure, per-shipment documentation, bank-to-bank settlement — is disproportionate to the transaction size. At that scale, selling to a local or regional buying office on a per-parcel basis is more practical and generates comparable net proceeds without the compliance overhead.
Above 500 carats per month — and particularly above 1,000 carats — the economics of a committed buyer relationship become compelling. A buyer willing to commit to 12 months of purchase will typically offer a pricing premium over spot to secure that commitment. The mine gains revenue predictability; the buyer gains supply certainty. The contract overhead amortises quickly at this scale.
For artisanal mining cooperatives that aggregate production from multiple small operators, a cooperative structure that consolidates output to 500–1,000 carats per month before approaching an offtake buyer is the most viable path. OnePiece has experience working with cooperative structures in Sierra Leone and the DRC where individual operator production is below the offtake threshold but aggregated cooperative output is not.
Offtake structure parameters
Min production for offtake
~500 carats/month (below: per-parcel spot advised)
Price formula options
% of Rapaport reference · fixed premium/discount to Antwerp sight
KP cert
Required per shipment — not substituted by the agreement
Valuation
Per shipment — mine-head or independent valuer
Buyers
Antwerp · Dubai (DMCC) · Mumbai (BDB)
Contract period
1–3 years typical · renewable
Tell us about your production.
Country, monthly carat output, typical size and quality profile, current documentation status — share what you have and we will advise on whether an offtake structure is appropriate and who the right buyer counterparty is. WhatsApp for immediate response.
WhatsApp +60 19-873 8500