Among the various sectors of which the jewellery trade is comprised, companies handling coloured gemstones have faced some of the most daunting of challenges. Although their products are wildly popular among consumers, they have been hamstrung by a number of elements. These include a vast and complex supply chain, where almost all of the mining companies, lapidaries and wholesalers are small and medium-sized enterprises; a myriad of systems and methods for identifying and evaluating different gemstones types; a lack of harmony in accurately describing colour, where subtle variations can often mean substantial differences in value; and objective difficulties in tracing the provenance of gemstones, in an industry where some 80 percent of the miners are artisanal.

However, recent technological advances promise to level the playing field. Providing solutions to many of the challenges that the coloured gemstone sector have traditionally faced, they raise the prospect of building a trade that is more robust and more competitive.

The impact of these developments were thre subject of a Jewellery Industry Voices webinar, entitled “The Technological Transformation of the Coloured Gemstone Trade” on December 17, 2020.

The panellists were Veronica Favoroso, CEO and Co-Founder of GemCloud Software, Thailand; Menahem Sevdermish, President and CEO, Gemewizard, Israel; Daniel Nyfeler, Managing Director, Gübelin Gem Lab, Switzerland; and Tobias Kormind, Managing Director, 77 Diamonds, United Kingdom.

The seminar was co-moderated by Edward Johnson and Steven Benson, and word of welcome were delivered by Gaetano Cavalieri, President of CIBJO.