CIBJO’s Sector A, which deals in gem materials, has accepted a proposal that a new commission be created, which will deal with issues related to the precious coral industry. The president of the newly created Coral Commission is  Enzo Liverino, and he has been charged with creating a Coral Blue Book, which lists acceptable nomenclature, descriptive terms and standards.

Congratulating Mr. Liverino, Sector A President Roland Naftule invited CIBJO  members to apply to join the body and contribute to its work.

The efforts of the Precious Stones Multi-Stakeholder Working Group (PS-MSWG) to create new chain of distribution regulations in the jewellery pipeline were widely discussed at the Sector A meeting.

President Roland Naftule said his first reaction upon hearing of the plans of the group was to ask why they were doing it in such a way. “This work should fall under the CIBJO umbrella since we are the representative body of the jewellery industry from across the world. CIBJO should serve as the body facilitating debate, but the PS-MSWG group does not agree.”

“They have their own reasons. They are trying to regulate some functions of the jewellery industry. Many people feel comfortable with their work but many others do not want to be regulated by the government. Some of aspects of their work go too far. There is a lot of concern about what the group is trying to achieve – and I don’t entirely understand their aims myself,” he added.

On other issues, Mr. Naftule said numerous updates of the Diamond, Coloured Stone and Pearl Blue Books had been carried out. As soon as the changes were accepted by the CIBJO Board, the books would be posted to the CIBJO website.

Coloured Stone Commission President Nilam Alawdeen pointed out that CIBJO recognises that its standards are subject to government regulation in the respective jurisdictions of CIBJO members. He proposed that Sector A accept the following wording in its Blue Books: “In the event that there are no government regulations in a member’s country, the local industry rule will take precedence as long as it stronger.”

Photo Caption: Enzo Liverino (second from left), President of the new Coral  Commission, during the Sector A meeting in Moscow. He seated with (from left): Nilam Alawdeen, President of the Coloured Stone Commission; Kenneth Scarrat, President of the Perl Commission; and Roland Naftule, Sector A President.

The two major issues discussed by the Gemmological Commission at the CIBJO Congress in Moscow were how gem labs worldwide can work together and harmonise nomenclature, standards and methodology to improve consistency and reliability of information to ensure consumer confidence, and the use of colour descriptive terms such as pigeon-blood red and royal blue on gemstone reports.

Ken Scarratt told the meeting that although he had originally been sceptical about the whole issue of the pigeon-blood red colour, GIA had consulted with traders and dealers around the world and examined their rubies to see if the colour was universally accepted and recognised.

With that being the case, the GIA decided to create the pigeon-blood red category.

Other participants warned of the dangers of trying to create a universally accepted definition of the pigeon-blood red colour, among them Ronnie Bauer from Australia. It was noted that market demand had pushed the gemstone industry to accept the colour definition in the same way that it had spurred the trade to provide country of origin information. Traders and sellers are also using the royal blue definition for a range of blue colour sapphires, the meeting heard.

On the issue of colour standards and definitions, Pornsawat Wathanakul of the Gem and Jewellery Institute of Thailand (GIT), also a Commission Vice President, talked about the GIT’s master sets for rubies and sapphires. She spoke about the difficulties gem labs face in setting colour standards.

Gemmological Commission President Hanco Zwaan confirmed that the issue of colour standards was a critical one, saying that the presentation illustrated the difficulties labs faced in attempting to describe colours precisely.

A second presentations at the meeting, presented by Commission Vice President Claudio Milisenda, was on the subject of opals from Ethiopia and how they could change colour simply by being immersed in water – in some cases for as little as two minutes.

Hydrophane Wollo stones revert to their original color 25 minutes after being removed from water, Mr. Milisenda explained. Opals from Ethiopia, he added, have a tendency to display surface cracks.

Photo Caption: CIBJO Gemmological Commission Vice President Claudio Milisenda describing opals from Ethiopia.

Meeting at the CIBJO Congress in Moscow, the Precious Metals Commission discussed at length the issue of the Dodd-Frank Act in the United States and how it affects the jewellery industry’s use of gold in particular. It also reviewed the proposals on the issue from the European Union.

Susan Flamm, Senior Counsel at the U.S. Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC), spoke about the Dodd-Frank Act and how the legislation impacts publicly-held American companies which must report to the Securities and Exchange Commission on the gold they use in their products and where it is sourced. Publicly traded companies must submit filings with the due diligence efforts they have made on the issue by June 2, she explained.

Although there are only about 30 American companies which need to file, but problems arise from the fact that there are thousands firms supplying those companies.Each has to make extensive efforts to find out about suppliers – and companies which are, in turn, supplying them.

Flamm said the legislation has caused great confusion – and expense. A product is not necessarily conflict free if it has traveled through the Democratic Republic of Congo or neighbouring states. “Due diligence has to be in place to ensure that the minerals did not finance conflict,” she said.

She explained that various trade bodies such as chambers of commerce had filed court cases regarding the provisions of the law, saying that the demand that they place labels saying that the jewellery does not contain gold from the DRC was against the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which upholds the right to free speech.

However, an appeal court struck down most of the claims but asked that a lower court again look at the issue and how the wording can be changed and brought in line with the right to free speech, she said.

Commission President Michael Allchin said the U.S. government had pressured the EU to create similar legislation. However the EU was taking a different approach, looking at minerals defined by the OECD from anywhere in the world.

He said also that, due to the large demands of the Dodd-Frank Act, many companies that traded legitimately in the DRC and neighbouring states have pulled out, leaving the field free for gangsters to take control, leading to exploitation, child labor and other human rights abuses.

Mr. Allchin recounted how, along with CIBJO President Gaetano Cavalieri, he had travelled to the EU to discuss proposed legislation. The EU approach is to create a list of refiners and smelters which are operating legitimately with which jewellery companies should do business.

There was also a discussion on the issue of nickel and the EU nickel directive in 1998 that is being replaced by a 2011 directive. It was proposed that CIBJO members urge their National Standards Bodies to seek a temporary suspension of Appendix One of EN1811:2011 and a reintroduction of the 1998 directive. And also to seek compliance from national governments that products already in the supply chain before March 31, 2013 which comply with EN1811:1998 be regarded as compliant.

Mr. Allchin said that the CIBJO Congress in 2013, members had been asked to approach their national EU authorities on the issue and they had successfully done so.

Mr. Allchin notified members that he had decided to step down as Precious Metals Commission President and proposed that Stella Layton, Chief Executive and Assay Master at the Birmingham Assay Office in the United Kingdom, replace him until the 2015 Congress in Brazil, where new elections for the position will be held.

Photo Caption: Michael Allchin (right), President of the Precious Metals Commission, and John Henn, of the National Association of Goldsmiths of the United Kingdom, during the session of the Precious Metals Commission in Moscow.

Following the establishment last year of the CIBJO Trade Show Commission, participants at its meeting this year discussed how trade shows can help the work of the jewellery industry and how it can help lay out a strategic approach on the subject.

Trade Show Commission President, Corrado Facco, spoke of the need for CIBJO to get United Nations’ recognition of the Branded Trust initiative developed by Professor Donald Feaver of RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, an expert in Corporate Social Responsibility.

Mr Facco is also the managing director of Fiera di Vicenza in Italy.

In Mr. Facco’s opinion, trade shows should provide a critical infrastructural platform for the delivery of systems that companies can implement themselves, thereby incorporating standard and certifiable CSR methods of operation in their own businesses.

The commission’s aim in general, Facco said, is to provide a common platform, develop options by which the trade can be developed, while upholding the ethics of CIBJO, which include CSR, disclosure and fair trade.

“We would like to see 1,000 companies involved in the CSR programme,” he said. “It is a voluntary initiative, but it needs to be easy to understand and effective. The added value that it can bring must also be apparent from the outset.”

Mr. Facco would like CIBJO to feature at educational seminars at shows on CSR, ethics and other issues. In addition, show organisers could be endorsed by CIBJO, as might show exhibitors, as long as they showed that they were in compliance with CIBJO’s codes of conduct.

Photo Caption: Corrado Facco, President of the CIBJO Trade Show Commission

The issue of so-called carbon footprints and how companies can reduce the amount of pollution into the atmosphere was the main subject on the agenda of the Marketing and Education Committee.

A British company called Carbon Expert gave a presentation on operating in a carbon-neutral manner, telling delegates: You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Committee members heard about ways to reduce carbon emissions and the benefits to business of doing so. The firm said it could aid companies in the jewellery pipeline to put a plan in place and manage it for them.

Some of the world’s largest consumer goods firms, with scores of brands, have already taken steps to reduce carbon emissions, as have leading luxury goods firms, including Gucci, Tiffany & Co and Louis Vuitton. Many of these companies are seeing greater revenues because they are advertising their environmentally friendly ways of operating, and  this has struck a chord with consumers who are willing to pay a higher cost for goods that have been created in a way that causes less damage to the environment than was formally the case.

Globally-known department store Marks & Spencer saw a 50 percent rise in revenue in 2012 due in part to its carbon-neutral activities that were popular with shoppers, the Carbon Expert team reported.

Having carried out carbon-neutral activities, it is critical that businesses report them to their customers in order to reap the full benefit, they said.

On the sustainability theme, Dr. Laurent Cartier from the Swiss lab SSEF, spoke about sustainable pearl and coral farming in a project that had been sponsored by Tiffany & Co. He said that caring for the environment where pearl farming took place often produced healthier marine life, and healthier oysters, meaning better-quality natural pearls were created.

He said that the arguments in favour of sustainable development produced a favourable response among the younger generation – a target market for jewellery firms.

Professor Donald Feaver from RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, pointed out that CSR is also about environmental protection. He cautioned industry members against using claims that they could not back up, saying that there were many knowledgeable groups worldwide keeping an eye on such claims and embarrassing firms which made exaggerated claims.

Photo Caption: Moya McKeown of Carbon Expert during deliberations of the CIBJO Marketing and Education Commission in Moscow.

Advertising rules, regulations and guidelines were comprehensively explained at the Ethics Commission meeting by Suzan Flamm, Senior Counsel at the U.S. Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC).

Ms. Flamm delivered a presentation covering the topics: what is advertising, basic principles of ethical advertising, truthfulness, substantiation, fairness, and advertising online.

She started out by explaining that advertising truthfully worldwide was a sure way of boosting consumer confidence. Avoid threats of prosecution by government agencies or competitors’ lawsuits caused by bad advertising methods, she said, adding that the principles that she outlined were accepted for the most part around the world.

“Claims must be truthful and non-deceptive, and this also applies to characteristics of the materials used in jewellery items,” Ms. Flamm said. “Advertising is evaluated on the overall impression it creates. An advert is deceptive if it omits information likely to mislead the consumer. Advertising must contain clear, understandable language. There must be disclosures if stones used in the jewellery have undergone treatment.”

“Companies must be able to substantiate their claims. The only exception is where they include opinion-type comments, such as ‘Our diamonds are brighter than the stars,’” she continued.

Ms. Flamm explained that all ethical considerations in traditional media applied also to Internet advertising. “Disclosures should be clear, conspicuous and prominent and on the same screen. The reader should not have to click to a different screen to get information regarding information about the item being advertised.”

The same sort of rules also apply to social media advertising. A false review is fake advertising as it leads the reader to believe that the review has been produced by a neutral, third-party reviewer. Similarly, paying someone to write a review of a product is also false advertising, she stated.

Photo Caption: Suzan Flamm, Senior Counsel at the U.S. Jewelers Vigilance Committee.