Former De Beers Group CEO Bruce Cleaver will assume his post as new Gemfields chair and independent non-executive director beginning July 1, 2024. 

According to the coloured gemstone miner, Cleaver will also become chair of the nomination committee. He is replacing outgoing chair Martin Tolcher.

“Bruce’s reputation as a preeminent leader is well-documented and he brings considerable experience of mining gemstones in Africa and marketing them internationally,” noted Gemfields.

Cleaver became De Beers CEO in 2016. In 2023, he was appointed co-chairman of the group. During his stint as CEO, Cleaver led De Beers’ transformation across the value chain. It was during his tenure when the group launched the world’s largest and most sophisticated diamond recovery and exploration vessels; redesigned supply agreements with Sightholders to enhance the efficiency of rough diamond distribution; integrated the organisation’s downstream businesses; created Tracr™, the world's only distributed diamond blockchain that starts at the source; launched the Lightbox Jewelry laboratory-grown diamond business; and established and embedded the Building Forever sustainability framework across the group, including setting 12 ambitious sustainability goals for 2030.

Cleaver remarked that he is looking forward to working with the Gemfields team as they prepare the company for its next stage of growth. Gemfields is constructing a new processing plant at Montepuez Ruby Mining Limitada, tripling throughput capacity. The facility is on schedule for completion in the first half of 2025.

"Gemfields is a unique and extraordinary business, one that has taken a fragmented and fairly informal industry to considerable sophistication as the first consistent supplier of significant quantities of coloured gemstones in a responsible and transparent manner," he continued.