Toronto-based Diamond Bourse of Canada will be ready to offer a range of services to members by the end of this month, the bourse announced yesterday.

Bourse president, Bhushan Vora, said that the trading floor will provide a physical space in which members can deal in diamonds and offer “a range of valuable business facilities, such as for education, seminars and lectures about diamonds and related areas of interest," he said.

Mr. Vora said that a technological centre is situated on the bourse's trading floor with advanced systems, including a Diamension proportion and cut grading machine and a Colibri colour grading machine from Sarin Technologies and a Diamond Sure machine for indicating synthetic and HPHT trade diamonds from De Beers.

HRD Antwerp NV has provided a D Screen machine to detect synthetic and HPHT diamonds and a gemological microscope, it said.

A diamond grading certificate window has already begun operating at the bourse. It serves as a drop-off point where members can submit diamonds for certification and receive same-day diamond grading services.

The bourse expects the Custom Bonded Warehouse to be open and ready for business during the third week of March.

March will also see the start of a seminar program. The first in the series is an interactive seminar by the Royal Bank of Canada, who will discuss how the diamond industry and financial institutions can work together more effectively, the bourse said.