For decades, manufacturers have been creating synthetic diamonds for industrial use. Now technology has advanced to the point where man-made diamonds can compete with natural ones in regard to purity and clarity.

In fact, De Beers Group, one of the world’s oldest diamond mining companies, recently opened in Gresham a new $94 million facility for manufacturing diamonds for jewelry. It’s the first such facility in the U.S., according to the firm.

“Originally, synthetic diamonds were manufactured for industrial applications, and the history goes back 50 years,” said Steve Coe, CEO of Lightbox, the De Beers Group company that sells manufactured diamond jewelry. “What’s new here in recent years is the quality of lab-grown diamonds has improved to be able to use them for jewelry.”

De Beers expects to be able to manufacture up to 200,000 polished carats worth of diamonds annually.

“The Gresham facility gives us a facility that’s 100 percent dedicated to Lightbox,” Coe said. “That gives us a lot more capacity available, and we can grow our business a lot faster in the years ahead.”

Two main processes are used to manufacture synthetic diamonds. One is the older, high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) method. At the Gresham facility, a somewhat newer method known as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is being used. Small vacuum chambers are filled with gases that react to create layers of carbon that “grow” over time into a single stone. Though energy-intensive, CVD is cheaper and easier to monitor.

“It’s relatively new where the technology got to a place where they could make gem-quality stones efficiently and cost-effectively,” said Jim Kloiber, a Battalion public relations specialist who has worked in the diamond industry for several decades. “Because if it costs the same as natural diamonds, what’s the point? But I think this evolution has made it very attractive to De Beers Group to be investing into this.”

Company officials sought inexpensive and reliable power and water, as well as skilled labor. They ultimately selected the 7.64-acre Gresham property located at 23055 S.E. Stark St. Crews broke ground on the $94 million facility in May 2018 and achieved substantial completion by December 2019. This year, workers have installed and tested lab equipment and building systems.

“When we do a deposition run, that typically takes two to three weeks,” Coe said. “If that gets interrupted in any way we lose the output of the run. So the building has been built with very high reliability in mind, with robustness in mind.”

Structural steel and slab-on-grade concrete were used for the facility, along with prefabricated EIFS (exterior insulation and finish system) walls. Outside, the building resembles an ordinary warehouse. Inside, it does not.

“It would have been cheaper just to build a black box (with) no windows, no light – very, very functional,” said Adam O’Grady, general manager of the facility. “But the intent was to be very open about what we’re trying to do. It’s a new process and a new product, so we’re trying to engage people with it and to understand it – and to do that you do want to bring people on site.”

A large amount of methane, oxygen, argon and several other gases are used in CVD. To cool machinery used in the process, a lot of water is used – thousands of gallons per minute.

“With the gas system, whether it’s inside the building or outside the building, all of this was built modular off-site in a factory and it came in and just bolted together,” O’Grady said. “When you have so many other things in the air in a complicated construction project, to be able to say we don’t have to worry about it, it’s being done off-site, is huge.

“The frame-ups, the EIFS walls, went up in three days,” he added. “The entire way around the site, just folded up, folded up, slot into place. It’s really impressive actually.”

Three separate underground power lines feed the plant from PGE substations in Gresham and Fairview. The idea is to ensure the manufacturing process is not interrupted in even the slightest manner.

“The plant parallels a mission-critical data center for its operational redundancy and efficiency,” said Aaron Holm, associate director for project management for Gardiner & Theobald, a U.K.-based firm that oversaw construction of the plant. “All critical systems were designed to N+1 redundancy.”

The facility was designed to potentially accommodate expansion in mind. Also, seismic resiliency is beyond local code requirements.

“The foundation is a grid of concrete-grade beams designed to span differential settlement in the event of an earthquake,” Holm said. “The process gas piping was designed to allow movement by utilizing loops – think of this as a crazy straw – allowing movement in any direction.”

For safety, a gas detection system is in the floor and ceiling, while a temperature control system ensures the manufacturing process remains stable and consistent. This is critical in CVD, because the heat it generates can reach 3,000 degrees Celsius or greater.

“You’re pumping about 3,000 gallons of water a minute – you’re taking a lot of heat out,” O’Grady said. “But the heat is mostly being radiated into the building, so mostly what our air systems are doing is removing that heat. And it’s pretty easy here in the Pacific Northwest, because the outside air is usually pretty cool, and you’re bringing that in.”

A comprehensive building management system is able to detect fires as well as gas leaks. In the event of such an occurrence, alarms will sound and manufacturing systems will immediately shut down.

“Safety is a very big part of this and we take it incredibly seriously,” Coe said. “We’ve been using this technology for 30 years now across the group, and when done correctly it’s a very safe process.”

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