(IDEX Online) - Sarine has reported a 12 per cent drop in Q1 revenue compared with the previous quarter.It blamed a combination of the global slowdown and teething troubles with its new Meteorite Plus technology, for the high-speed automated processing of small rough diamonds. The Israel-based diamond tech company realized $11.5m in Q1 2023, compared to $13.1m in Q4 2022.The expected post-lockdown recovery in China hadn't happened and the global inventory of polished diamonds was growing amid weak consumer sentiment."In general, the geopolitical and macro-economic conditions in Q1 2023 are so dramatically different than those in the same quarter of 2022, as to make comparisons all but meaningless."Negative macro-economic conditions are expected to continue to affect our business in 2023," it said.The quarterly decrease was also due to "teething" issues with the newly launched Meteorite Plus. Testing is ongoing in India, but the company believes those problems have now been rectified.Sarine said it expected demand for its Galaxy family systems to rebound, once issues with Meteorite Plus are resolved.In March the company reported a fall in net profits for FY2022, down just over 46 per cent from $16.5m to $8.8m.It also said revenue for the year were down by 5.4 per cent, from $62.1m to $58.8m, down from a high base in H1 2021 due to post-Covid spike in US jewelry spending. Sales to India, its biggest market by far, fell 25 per cent from $40.5m to $30.3m.Pic courtesy Sarine