Johannesburg - The sparkling new alternative to burial and cremation hitting the funeral home industry literally turns the dust of loved ones into diamonds.
While it may sound like a bedazzling marketing ploy, an American company started marketing the concept last year and funeral homes across the US have begun promoting the option as part of their service.
Now, South African funeral companies are waking up to the cash-generating potential of the dust-to-diamonds alternative. Using well-known technology perfected in South Africa almost 50 years ago, a synthetic diamond is created by putting the carbon from cremated remains under extreme pressures and temperatures.
The process effectively replicates in two months what takes the earth billions of years to create naturally. The specially manufactured stone, containing the essence of a loved one's ashes, can then be set in a ring or pendant and passed on from generation to generation for centuries to come.
And it comes fairly cheaply.
Having a diamond made from ashes costs a tenth of the price genuine diamonds fetch in retail stores.
LifeGem, the Illinois-based company that released its product last summer, says prices start from $4 000 for a quarter carat and rise according to the size of the gem. A 1-carat gem will set you back $22 000 and LifeGem's diamond facility is working on creating near flawless diamonds of up to 3 carats.
"The created diamonds are identical in every aspect to natural diamonds. They have the same brilliance, fire, and hardness as any high quality diamond you may find at Tiffany's," LifeGem claims.
But that's not all - LifeGem says pets can be diamonds too.
Scientists say the process dovetails with how industrial diamonds are made.
Synthetic or man-made diamonds have been manufactured from carbon since the mid-1950s when General Electric developed the process for making small diamonds for industrial uses.
By the mid-1990s, gem-quality synthetics began to appear and industrial diamonds have been used in everything from coated drill bits to supersonic computer chips.
Kenneth Poeppelmeier, a chemistry professor at Northwestern University, says there is no reason why LifeGem's process should not work.
Avrum Blumberg, a chemistry professor at DePaul University in Chicago, confers that it is feasible to make a high-quality diamond from the carbon in a cremated human.
LifeGem is planning to build its own diamond-making facility in the US. But while LifeGem waits for a US patent on the process, De Beers has acknowledged that the technology is available in South Africa.
But Brian Roodt, a spokesperson for De Beers South Africa, says the diamond giant is not interested in developing the expertise.
De Beers latched on to the potential of industrial, or synthetic, diamonds in 1947 when Sir Ernest Oppenheimer established an industrial diamond research laboratory.
The laboratory, a forerunner to what is now known as De Beers Industrial Diamonds (Debid), produced its first synthetic diamond in 1958.
Today De Beers claims that Debid is one of the world's leading suppliers of synthetic diamonds. The firm has completed the relocation of its production facilities from Ireland and Germany to South Africa.
The R14 million plant, the largest of its kind in the world, was formally opened last year in Springs on the east Rand, where the company has maintained a smaller factory to produce industrial diamonds, as well as the high-stress equipment needed for the job, for over 20 years.
"The technology has been around for decades," says Roodt.
"But it's just not something De Beers would get into."
This blows the market open for any company interested in bringing the concept to Africa.
"We are definitely interested in looking at introducing the option," says Bruce Riley, a spokesperson for the HT Group, the parent company of Doves Funeral Services.
The dust-to-diamond option, which offers the funeral industry its first new product in centuries, also comes in time for local funeral houses to capitalise on the turning trend in the South African market.
Riley says there has been a push for cremation as the country's graveyards fill with young and old.
"Cremation just makes more sense. There certainly has been an upswing the number of requests for cremation versus burials," says Riley.
While the group, which owns over 660 parlours across the country, had not yet heard of LifeGem, Riley says it would be keen to offer the service should it spark consumer demand.
Thom Kight, the managing director of Thom Kight & Co, agrees that it is a refreshing option.
However, the cost may be an inhibiting factor for South Africans.