Element Six
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| Company type | Privately held company |
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| Industry | Manufacturing and distribution of superhard engineering and technology material solutions |
| Founded | 1946 |
| Founder | Ernest Oppenheimer |
| Headquarters | London |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Bruce Cleaver, Chairman Walter Huhn, Chief Executive Officer |
| Products | Industrial Diamond, Cubic Boron Nitride, Carbide, Ceramics, Synthetic Diamond, CVD Diamond, Synthetic Polycrystalline Diamond, Polycrystalline Cubic Boron Nitride |
| Services | Development of advanced engineering industrial and technology material solutions |
| Revenue |  US $0.5 billion (2011) |
| Owners | Umicore, De Beers |
Number of employees | 2,000 |
| Website | www.e6.com |
Element Six is a member of the De Beers Group of Companies, its majority shareholder. Element Six designs, develops and produces synthetic diamond supermaterials, and operates worldwide with its head office registered in London, and primary manufacturing facilities in China, Germany, Ireland, South Africa, U.S. and the U.K. Element Six is organized into two primary commercial divisions – Abrasives and Technologies.
Element Six advanced engineering materials are used in abrasive applications such as cutting, grinding, drilling, shearing and polishing, while the extreme properties of synthetic diamond beyond hardness are applied in a wide array of industrial and technology applications such as optics, power transmission, water treatment, semi-conductors, sensors and quantum information processing.
History
As De Beers Industrial Diamond, the company was set up initially to concentrate on the industrial applications of natural diamond. Following the development of diamond synthesis in the early 1950s, the company acquired the technology and by 1958 was able to manufacture material based on a high pressure, high temperature process. By the 1960s, the company was offering a range of diamond grit products that was followed by nickel and coated diamond materials plus grinding products based on cubic boron nitride. In 1992, breakthroughs in chemical vapour deposition technology opened the opportunity to synthesize diamond films and a new raft of application areas became possible.
In 2002, the company changed its name to Element Six and its business focus moved towards building an enterprise based on advanced material applications for increasingly sophisticated engineering customers backed by global technical support and a strong research and development organization.
In 2013 Element Six opened the world’s largest and most sophisticated synthetic diamond research and development facility. The Global Innovation Centre, near Oxford, UK develops a pipeline of innovative synthetic diamond and related supermaterial products for customers, in industries from oil and gas drilling to precision machining and electronics.
Products
Products offered by Element Six fall into two broad categories - superabrasives and advanced diamond products. The largest part of the company's business today is in superabrasives. These products are based on the world's hardest materials such as synthetic diamond and cubic boron nitride that are used in a wide range of cutting, grinding and drilling applications range from oil and gas exploration to machine tools, automotive part manufacturing and marble production.
See also
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