< Previous66 JULY 2019 SI T E S E L E C T IO N To re-phrase a well-known marketing message, diamonds take forever. Formed under extreme pressure and high temperatures deep inside the Earth and delivered toward the surface by volcanic eruptions, conventional diamonds are typically more than a billion years old. Now, machines can do the job in under three weeks. ey are not “fake,” either. Synthetic diamonds grown in laboratories have the same chemical properties as natural diamonds. Long employed for heavy, industrialized purposes and more recently used in goods such as at screens, medical equipment and solar panels, lab-grown diamonds are set to disrupt the jewelry market by o ering a nearly boundless supply of stones at prices a fraction of what natural diamonds cost. “ e interest in this has just exploded over the past few years,” says Paul Ziminsky, an independent diamond analyst and consultant based in New York. Perhaps the surest sign yet that lab-grown diamond jewelry is catching on is a ,-sq.-ft. ( ,-sq.-m.) synthetic diamond factory soon to open in the Portland suburb of Gresham, Oregon. What pops out is the name: De Beers. e world’s largest producer of diamond jewelry, De Beers had long resisted entry into synthetics, fearful of cutting into its own brand. But times have changed, and so has the market. “We see an opportunity that’s been missed,” says De Beers Chief Executive Bruce Cleaver. “A ordable fashion jewelry may not be forever, but it’s perfect for right now.” Only in the last ve years have synthetic diamond producers begun to create stones of su cient aesthetic appeal to compete with natural diamonds. With jewel makers having adopted technology developed by the solar industry, the quality of lab-grown diamonds has progressed to the point where even gemologists, using the naked eye, can’t always distinguish what’s synthetic from what’s natural. Lab-created diamond production for use in jewelry, says Ziminsky, now exceeds . million carats annually. He predicts that the synthetic diamond jewelry market, now an estimated $ . billion, will grow at % annually to $ . billion by and to $ . billion by . by G ARY DAUGHTERS gar y.daug hter s @ site s ele c tion.c om Lab-created gems are shaking up the jewelry market. A New Day for DIAMONDS DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY Emerging diamond technology produces in weeks what nature needs eons to do. Source: LightboxPresently, there are two popular methods of growing synthetic diamonds. High Pressure, High Temperature (HPTH) is a process used for decades to manufacture diamonds for industrial use, which still account for % of the worldwide synthetic market. Used primarily in China, HPTH simulates the brutal force of subterranean Earth by applying searingly high temperatures and high pressure to dissolve carbon into a diamond seed. More recently, synthetic diamond makers have adopted a newer process called Chemical Vapor Distribution (CVD). Akin to D printing, CVD layers carbon on the diamond seed in a vacuum chamber. Increasingly favored for use in the jewelry market, CVD is easier to control and monitor than HPTH. It also requires less heat ( , degrees Fahrenheit) than HPTP, which employs temperatures comparable to the outer layer of the sun. “What’s interesting about the CVD method,” Ziminisky says, “is that it was largely developed by the solar industry, which invested heavily in it to produce polysilicon for solar panels. e LED light bulb industry also spent a lot of money advancing that technology for light bulb production.” Ziminisky says that as CVD technology improves, industrial uses for lab-grown diamonds are likely to grow more exotic. “ e new frontier,” he says, “is going to be producing very high-quality diamonds that can be used for laser equipment, processing chips, quantum-computing components and nuclear batteries. We’re not there yet because companies can’t produce those higher quality diamonds at a low enough price for high-tech industrial uses, but that’s CVD’s longer-term goal. So, it’s an industry that can eventually be worth in the hundreds of billions of dollars.” De Beers says it will invest $ million over four years to develop the Portland-area facility, which is expected to reach its full output potential of , carats a year in . Element Six Technologies, an Oxford, England- based synthetic diamond technology company owned by De Beers, is to manufacture gems at the plant exclusively for De Beers’ new fashion- jewelry brand, Lightbox. e synthetic gems will sell for $ for a quarter-carat stone and $ for a one-carat version, says Element Six. Natural diamonds, by contrast, generally cost more than $ , per carat. Oddly enough, De Beers has dismissed the distinctiveness of its own new products. e company said it would not grade its lab-grown diamonds because “we don’t think they deserve to be graded.” Industry analysts say such sentiments re ect the company’s wider interest in protecting the natural diamond market, where it dominates. Last year, De Beers generated more than $ billion in revenue for its parent company, Anglo American. “De Beers,” says Ziminisky, “has long been one of the front-runners with synthetic technology, but they never really used it to make diamonds for jewelry because they didn’t want to directly compete with the natural diamond industry. But I think the development of some of the other companies has progressed enough where they wanted to get in the game and use their marketing and distribution power to try to steer the public perception of what man-made diamonds are. ey don’t necessarily see this as a signi cant revenue contributor for the company. Maybe at some point they will, but I think this is more of a strategic marketing position ploy at this point.” De Beers says its manufacturing process is extremely energy intensive, which made the relatively low electricity costs typical of the Upper Northwest a major factor in choosing the Portland area for the new factory. … it’s an industry that can eventually be worth in the hundreds of billions of dollars.” — Paul Ziminsky, Independent Diamond Analyst S I T E S E L E C T I O N JULY 2019 6770 JULY 2019 SI T E S E L E C T IO N Steve Coe, Element Six’s chief operating o cer, told e New York Times that, “Given the pressure required to create lab-grown diamonds, it’s akin to the Ei el Tower being stacked on a can of Coke. If you look at the detailed numbers, the energy consumption levels between natural and man-made diamonds are in the same ballpark.” e Element Six facility is being constructed in the Gresham Vista Business Park, inside an Enterprise Zone that o ers a ve-year property tax abatement on new investment. Owned by the Port of Portland, the park is located next to an ON Semiconductor campus less than a mile from I- . Other park tenants include Subaru, which recently located its master distribution center of auto parts logistics there. “Element Six is a wonderful addition to the region’s portfolio of international brands,” says Janet La Bar, president and CEO of Greater Portland, Inc. “ is foreign direct investment from the UK further cements Greater Portland’s reputation for advanced manufacturing capabilities, bringing quality jobs and global attention to our partners in Gresham and the Port of Portland.” Feeding the Planet Jerry Feitelson wants to help save the world. And, yes, make some earthly bucks in the process. By now, you’ve probably heard the inconvenient forecast. e United Nations estimates that by , the world population will reach . billion, an increase of more than one-third, necessitating % more global food production. Feitelson, co- founder and CEO of San Diego-based Agribody Technologies, Inc (ATI), takes the UN forecast as a personal and professional challenge. “It’s why I’m so passionate,” Feitelson says. “We need to leverage every sustainable technique we can to improve food yields. I don’t see too many ways to do it outside of using the most modern breeding technologies that we have available.” For ATI, it all begins with seeds. Feitelson, with degrees from MIT and Stanford in molecular genetics, says he can tweak two speci c genes present in all plant species, resulting in higher crop yields of up to %, enhanced stress and disease tolerance, and two to three times longer shelf life. “Increased shelf life is really important for a number of reasons,” Feitelson says. “We now lose about % of our vegetables and fruits to waste in the eld, during transport and in the home. If we can triple shelf life without changing nutrition or taste, that would not only increase the value of those products, but of course it would aid the food supply. Reducing food waste is so important because as high as % to % of greenhouse gas emissions come from rotting food.” ATI’s patented technology sprang from a discovery by Feitelson’s eventual co-founder, Prof. John ompson of Canada at his lab in Waterloo. e original proof of concept involved transgenic methods of inserting foreign genetic material into plant cells. Two years of replicated eld trials in alfalfa gave unprecedented %- % yield increases with no loss of quality, Feitelson says. Scooping up the associated U.S.-issued patents, Feitelson theorized that he could achieve the same results through the newer technique of genome editing, which he con rmed last December in rice and canola with the ling of a broad utility patent. Not only cheaper than transgenic techniques, genome editing also is non-GMO, meaning less government regulation The rst commercial sea- crossing of an unmanned boat delivered a box of oysters. Source: SEA-KITand quicker speed to market. It also avoids no small amount of stigma. “When you make a small mutation without any foreign DNA, it’s indistinguishable from what could naturally occur,” Feitelson says. “We’re particularly excited about the positive impacts on public perception. “GMO technology,” says Feitelson, “has largely been under the purview of the biggest agricultural-chemical companies because they’re the only ones that can a ord it. And generally, it’s only been applied to the biggest row crops. Since genome editing is so relatively inexpensive and fast, it allows small- to midsize companies like us and dozens of others to release products on the market in many specialty crops that are really good for humanity. It democratizes crop improvement. at’s why I started this company.” ATI projects revenues of $, in , climbing to $ . million in . It says its targeted crops, which include corn, soy, wheat, canola and owers, represent a market value of $ billion. e company doesn’t directly sell seed to farmers but, instead, generates revenues through licensing agreements and co-development partnerships with agriculture companies. ATI has inked deals with St. Louis-based Benson Hill, J.R. Simplot, Tropic Biosciences, Sustainable Oils, TWR, Stark-Ayers and Intrexon, among others. “Our exit will not be an IPO,” Feitelson says, “I think that’s unrealistic. But I expect that we’ll be purchased at a good price by one of our customers. So, every time we do a deal, in addition to the revenue and the credibility, we get a potential acquirer.” Autonomy on the Water A box of native oysters from the east coast of England arrived May at the Dutch port of Oostende. e Mersea Island mollusks had crossed the North Sea on a boat called USV Maxliner, operated by Britain’s SEA-KIT International. e unmanned vessel was guided remotely from an onshore control room in Essex, making it the rst-known commercial sea crossing without a crew on board. Maxliner returned to Britain with a consignment of Belgian S I T E S E L E C T I O N JULY 2019 73 beer. Traveling at about four knots, the boat navigated each leg of the -mile ( -km) journey in hours. Some day in the future, virtually every transportation machine will steer itself. While autonomous cars still could be decades away, unmanned watercraft, both autonomous and remotely controlled, have emerged on the near horizon. Yara Birkeland, an autonomous container ship developed by Norway’s Kongsberg, is set to make chemical deliveries beginning next year between the Norwegian ports of Brevik and Larvik. Developers say that, as transport vessels, automated ships will reduce the risk of accidents with the potential of saving staggering amounts of money, beginning with eliminating labor costs. In addition, removing human support systems such as living quarters would yield sizable weight reduction and free up additional cargo space; at a mere ft. ( m.) long, the unmanned Maxliner is built to carry up to . tons. Designed and built in Britain, Maxliner was initially developed to nd new ways to map the sea oor. In addition to transportation, it could serve other uses. “It’s a fundamentally versatile model,” says Ben Simpson, SEA-KIT’s managing director. “It’s potential lies in its ability to be adapted to a range of tasks, whether it be transit, hydrographic surveys, environmental missions or marine safety and security. We’re tremendously excited to push the technology to its limits and see what we can achieve.” e defense industry is deeply involved in the development of autonomous vessels. Seagull, a multi-role unmanned surface vessel (USV) manufactured by Israel’s Elbit Systems of Haifa, is being out tted now with mini torpedoes, manufactured by Italian contractor Leonardo. Unveiled in , Seagull is capable of conducting mine counter-measures, anti-submarine warfare (ASW), maritime security and hydrography. In February, the Israeli Navy deployed Seagull in an ASW exercise that included lowering a sub-hunting sonar device initially designed for helicopters, but recently retro tted to be dropped into the water from the surface. Elbit says Seagull minimizes risk to human life and can lead to signi cantly lower operating costs. We now lose about 70% of our vegetables and fruits to waste…” — Jerry Feitelson, Co-Founder and CEO, Agribody Technologies, Inc.74 JULY 2019 SI T E S E L E C T IO N Airlines and institutions put their shoulders to the workforce wheel in order to keep wings aloft. According to the Boeing Technician Outlook, North America, , new aviation technicians will be needed between now and . e Bureau of Labor and Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook says the median salary in for Aircraft and Avionics Equipment Mechanics and Technicians is $,. So why are airlines having to scramble to fi ll those positions? It’s a combination of reasons. Low unemployment. Persisting — though faltering — resistance to trade certifi cations in favor of four-year degrees. e lingering reputation of mechanical occupations as dirty jobs that might sully our delicate, tech-enabled fi ngers. But there’s a new generation realizing the value of those jobs. ere are new eff orts afoot to fi ll the talent pipeline before it’s too late. And there is a growing national awareness of the attractiveness and career opportunities related to two-year degrees and professional certifi cations. Is that awareness refl ected yet in job candidate numbers? “Not yet,” says Kevin Dallaire, recruiting manager, human resources, for Piedmont Airlines, a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Airlines Group Inc. “While the technical schools have seen a slight increase in enrollment, overall they are still, on average, only % full. As the schools begin to see their enrollments increase, we expect a direct correlation in an increase in number of job candidates. We do see increased support from the federal government, including data that PIPELINE BUILDERS by ADAM BRUNS adam.br uns @ site s e le c tion.c om TECHNOLOGY & INNOVA TION: Photo: Getty Images AEROSP ACE & AVIA TIONNext >