Michael Bleby
12 July 2007
Johannesburg — THERE is a market for "fair trade" jewellery worth as much as $6bn, says Martin Rapaport, owner of the world's largest diamond trading platform.
New York-based Rapaport yesterday outlined plans to create a line of jewellery made by craftsmen in developing countries, such as SA, to meet this untapped demand.
Heightened public awareness of so-called conflict diamonds and the ways in which the diamond trade has fuelled many of Africa's bitter conflicts has given rise to a market for jewellery that uses materials sourced ethically and that gives a decent return to the workers involved in its production, Rapaport said.
"People will pay more for this jewellery," he told an audience at the Diamond Council offices in Johannesburg.
Rapaport plans, in conjunction with development organisations such as Pretoria-based Vukani, a "hybrid" product that is the joint work of local craftsmen and professional jewellers. It will feed a market of people who like jewellery, but want to know their purchase has contributed to the upliftment of people in poorer countries, said Rapaport.
He will be outlining these plans further on Sunday at jewellery trade fair Jewellex in Sandton.
Previous attempts to create jewellery manufacturing industries had failed because of quality problems and because they had been run by the governments, rather than business, said Rapaport.
"We never were able to jump over the sustainable economic development barrier and get an export market going."
With the right quality control and monitoring of wages and training - as well as the right marketing - a market for jewellery sourced from countries all over the continent could be created under a common label.
In time, this could account for 10% of the world's $60bn annual jewellery market, said Rapaport.
"One of my goals for SA is to create a manufacturing sector that specialises in the manufacturing of fair trade jewellery."
Rapaport said, however, that this jewellery may need to use a different brand than the "Fair Trade" label, which belongs to the Netherlands-based Fair Trade Original organisation .
Separately, Rapaport also said yesterday that he wanted to develop a channel to allow small diamond cutters in SA to sell their goods directly .
New regulations in SA, requiring diamond miners to reserve part of their rough production for local sale, will create an industry of local cutters and polishers. Many new cutters, however, would have no way to sell their product if not linked to a large company.
Rapaport said his company would offer shipping services and guarantee payment to banks once the stones were sold by tender in the US.
"We will help people sell their diamonds thought an open, transparent system" said Rapaport.
Louis Selekane, CEO of the South African Diamond and Precious Metals Regulator, agreed that access to markets for new cutters was a problem.
"The small guys don't have the networks that the established, mature companies have," he said. "We will gladly look at anything that will maximise value for small entrepreneurs."
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