A high tech company based in Manston has received help from a Ramsgate jewellers in its bid to halt the misery inflicted by the ‘blood diamonds’ trade.
Blood diamonds -also called conflict diamonds -are diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, an invading army’s war efforts, or a warlord’s activity.
ADANI Ltd in Manston is a world leader in X-ray body scanning and has delivered over 1,000 transmission Body Scanners to different ‘security’ establishments around the world.
ADANI Ltd, recently installed more than 100 Body Scanners in UK prisons for the detection of mobiles phones, SIM cards, drugs and other prohibited items in and on people. Some 5000 contraband items have already been detected on prisoners.
The ADANI Body Scanners have also been successfully used for 20 years in the detection of diamonds and other precious stones being smuggled out of mines around the world.
This creates conflict and suffering resulting from the trade in ‘Blood Diamonds’ and ensuring that diamonds cannot be taken from mines illicitly is a major step in stopping the trade.
Recently ADANI Ltd was asked by people operating a diamond mine, how small a diamond could be detected on or in a person using an ADANI Body Scanner.
To be able to answer the question accurately and obtain images using real diamonds ADANI has worked with B. N. Carthew jeweller in Queen Street, Ramsgate, which provided a range of unmounted diamonds of different sizes for the tests.
The tests showed that the ADANI Scanner can detect diamonds down to less than 0.1 carat – in other words a stone of a couple of millimetres in size.
These have negligible value, and with the ‘Blood Diamonds’ typically being much larger than this to be worth smuggling it means they can detected by the ADANI Body Scanner.
Use of the scanners adds another obstacle in the way of the conflict diamond trade.
The next step is for the ADANI Ltd technical team to test the ability on site at the mines.
Business Development Director at ADANI Ltd and Thanet dad-of-one Rob Keeler said: “ADANI Ltd would like to thank Barry Carthew of Carthew jewellers for arranging the availability of these diamonds for these tests.”
For more information about ADANI please email [email protected]
