With the gradual recovery of the global jewelry market, Chinese companies are seeing a boom in exports, with production capacity continuously increasing driven by overseas demand. Guangzhou is at the center of the world's jewelry processing and manufacturing industry, and is benefitting from the spike in demand. A jewelry trading company based in Panyu district of Guangzhou has witnessed a jump of up to 50% in jewelry exports year-on-year since April through the end of July. The company's major business is in jewelry design and cutting, with up to 90% of orders coming from overseas. Manager Yang told the Global Times that most of their clients are from the U.S. and Europe, with a backlog of orders to the end of the year. “Our production capacity is currently full and we are planning to expand production in the coming weeks with more machines having been ordered,” said Yang.
Currently, the processing volume of gold and silver jewelry in Panyu district accounts for more than 70% of the re-export trade volume of Hong Kong, and 30% of the entire global market. In the first half of 2021, Guangzhou recorded CNY7.6 billion of diamond processing imports, an increase of 130% year-on-year, with CNY9.95 billion of jewelry exports, up 95.2% from the previous year, according to data released by the Guangzhou Municipal Commerce Bureau in July. Huang Yingshi, General Manager of Evergreen Diamond based in Guangzhou said in a recent interview that the global production of diamonds had stagnated in the first half of the year due to the Covid-19 outbreak in India, triggering a global supply shortage. As a result, some customers and orders ended up with Chinese companies, and Huang Yingshi's company achieved a growth of more than 70% in the first half of this year. Huang Haoxuan, CEO of VDA Jewellery, said that the company has already bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. VDA Jewellery is a supplier and original design manufacturer of jewelry in Hong Kong, with a factory in Panyu district. The U.S. is the main market for the company, accounting for about 70% of its sales.
Liang Weizhang, General Manager of the Guangzhou Diamond Exchange, pointed out two emerging trends: jewelry demand in the global market is still robust, and China's manufacturing industry has the opportunity to win new international orders by fully taking advantage of the unique position of the nation across global supply chains. Full recovery and a return to a more typical growth trajectory isn't expected until 2022 to 2024 for the global diamond industry, according to the global diamond industry 2020-2021 report released by the Bain & Company and the Antwerp World Diamond Center, the Global Times reports. In 2020, despite the rampant epidemic, the total import and export of jewelry in Panyu district still reached CNY25.2 billion. The district has 2,890 diamond jewelry firms from more than 30 countries and regions, employing nearly 100,000 people.
