Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Scio Diamond Technology Corp. (SCIO) Almost Ready to Start Producing High-Quality, Single-Crystal Diamonds at South Carolina Facility

Scio Diamond Tech, the company which has mastered their patent-protected chemical vapor deposition process for lab growing/cultivating diamonds, to the point where they can systematically produce high-quality, single-crystal diamonds in a controlled, laboratory setting, reported a milestone today for the company’s Greenville, SC, production facility, which is now completed and ready to have the reactors installed.

A flurry of activity now, with new employees being hired on to start production training in May, SCIO Operations and R&D teams are heading up the effort and ensuring all personnel are able to execute effectively. The teams have been boots on the ground in SC for a month now prepping for this momentous occasion, prepping the equipment installs, getting situated for startup, commissioning, and the initial production runs.

CEO of SCIO, Joe Lancia, breathed a sigh of relief, after months of patiently waiting since late December, when the facility exited the design, construction, and initial prep phase, now that everything is ready to go for equipment and reactor installation. Lancia was clearly eager to get started testing the equipment and get the reactors in so that SCIO can kick begin the rigorous commissioning phase, keenly intent on ensuring that the facility will live up to exacting quality/production standards set by the company. But who wouldn’t be eager? The company will be producing superb, lab-grown diamonds with sizes, shapes, and quality combinations that are so rare in nature that the profit margins are tantalizing.

SCIO clearly knows what they are doing, knows the market, and has a clear strategy to offer diamonds in limited quantities, both for jewelry consumption vectors and for high tech/industrial applications. This company is thinking 50 years ahead of the game with a product that has immediate, high margin profit taking as its bread and butter, setting up synthetic diamond as the operating system and wear-resistant material of choice for decades to come.

Bold innovation in an environment where the majority of global inputs come from mining operations that are mostly concentrated in logistically difficult/costly environments and developing countries, a capitalization problem which grows all the more daunting as extant deposits become exhausted. The global market is dominated by operations like Rio Tinto Group’s Argyle Mine in Australia (90% of total global supply of high-end pink diamonds), as well as markets like Botswana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the Russian Federation being the largest producer by overall volume. Considering the industry dynamics as a whole, high-quality, single-crystal cultured diamonds (designed to preference/function), grown in a laboratory in downtown Greenville, SC, is an extremely appealing concept.

The diamond-growing reactors and ancillary/support equipment is on site and the infrastructure is ready to be tested and hooked up over the next few weeks. Electrical backup/generation, chillers for the reactors, HVAC/exhaust for the special gas delivery system needed for SCIO’s chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technology, and all of the supporting systems will be put through the paces and hooked up to the growers as things progress.

Once the 10 growers are hooked up, the production team will commence the detailed startup phase, ensuring the reactors function properly, and the eventually starting production runs, the first of which is slated for the company’s fiscal Q1 (period ending June 30).

Globally acknowledged authority in diamond grading and evaluation appraisal, the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) has stated in published findings from their recent analysis of pink diamonds made with CVD technology that such diamonds are “comparable to top quality natural pink diamonds” and that they “offer a potential new source of attractive gem quality material in the marketplace.” If SCIO can carve off even a small slice of the high-quality pink diamond pie, shareholders will be ecstatic. (Rio Tinto usually offers less than 100 finished carats of its best pink diamonds each year and they go from $100k to $1M per carat.)

For more information on developments at SCIO’s Greenville, SC, production facility, or to stay up to date with the latest news and information emerging at Scio Diamond Technology, please visit the company’s website at: www.ScioDiamond.com

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