Newsworthy Jewelry Making Technologies And Sustainable Practices Showcased At Vicenzaoro

For 69 years, Vicenzaoro has showcased the jewelry and timepiece industry’s best, brightest and most innovative designs. Along with being Europe’s most well-attended; stylistically influential jewelry and timepiece fair, Vicenzaoro also features the latest advanced technologies, applications, equipment and instruments used in key realms of the jewelry supply chain. Produced and presented by the Italian Exhibition Group (IEG), Vicenzaoro is staged every January for five days, and also every September. The following article is the second in a series highlighting some of Vicenzaoro’s most impactful initiatives and how they inform the jewelry business in general, and specialized sub-groups in particular.

According to J.B. Jones and Bella Neyman, co-founders of New York City Jewelry Week, a seven-day annual jewelry business conference, seminar series and networking event that encompasses jewelry material sourcing, design, manufacturing, sustainability and other important concerns, “Vicenzaoro is a leading show for debuting jewelry designs, but we’re also interested in the T.Gold initiative, as this is where the world’s most topical innovations in jewelry production make their debut.”

During the January 2023 edition of Vicenzaoro, Jones and Neyman presented a multi-media program in the Teatro Palladio, hosted by TRENDVISION Jewellery + Forecasting, which is the independent think tank of the show. Their talk detailed how 20^th century fine art and industrial technologies have been influencing jewelry design trends over the last century. “While advances in technology open up fresh technical and creative possibilities,” they observed, “any technical breakthroughs open up creative possibilities that can help generate new types of design, ignite new trends, and perhaps help popularize new materials. Because T.Gold offers an overview into the future of jewelry, today, for designers, manufacturers, and members of the media, T.Gold is a must-visit event on the annual jewelry calendar.”

January 2023 T.Gold Drew 10% Increase In Exhibitors Over Last Year

According to the Italian Exhibition Group (IEG) which produces Vicenzaoro, January 2023’s T.Gold registered a 10% increase in the number of exhibiting brands over 2022’s figures. Many exhibitors were discussing with attendees potential solutions for supply chain slowdowns that are either currently problematic or looming on the horizon. An especially enlightening exhibitor was United Precious Metals Refining Inc. (UPMR Inc.), which is based in Alden, New York and has 20,000 independent accounts.

As David Siminiski, vice-president of sales and marketing for UPMR Inc. explained, “We are half refiners and half product makers for the industry. We make grain, alloys, and karated metal in yellow, white, pink and green and are using best practices to reduce our environmental footprint and in order to earn such sustainable business certification.” An early proponent of environmental responsibility, UPMR Inc. has been a leading supplier of recycled fine gold and silver for well over a decade. While UPMR’s fine gold and silver has been certified since 2012 by SCS Global Services as being from 100% Recycled Sources, Siminski warned that, “The global supply of recycled gold and silver is barely enough to meet the growing demand.”

Demand For Recycled Gold Continues To Rise

While this demand is straining supplies, conflicting and ever-evolving definitions of what constitutes recycled gold have also contributed to the current shortage— and a fair amount of confusion. As Siminiski related, “In 2020, the Responsible Jewellery Council altered the definition of investment gold bars from recycled to non-recycled gold. They did this,” he continued, “because they were worried about the potential use of these bars for international money laundering. What this means in industry terms,” he continued, “is that a substantial amount of recycled gold has been removed from the supply chain. SCS Global Services, however,” he adds, “has stayed true to its original definition of investment bars as recycled gold. What I am telling clients,” Siminski said, “is that we are almost in a holding pattern to fulfill all of our requests for recycled gold and silver. We can see that there will soon come a point at which we’ll have to say, ‘We don’t have it.’” As Siminski put it, “There has to be a more informed understanding among manufacturers and designers about the recycled metals they are requesting, versus what is actually available in the supply chain.”

As the organizers of Vicenzaoro realize that environmental responsibility and sustainability practices are increasingly urgent concerns, the January 2023 edition featured panel discussions on such subjects as defining and fulfilling sustainability goals, preserving intangible jewelry heritage and implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs that benefit the planet, company employees, members of the surrounding community and future generations.

According to Corrado Peraboni, CEO of Italian Exhibition Group, IEG, the organization which presents Vicenzaoro, “Sustainability is a strategic priority in all of Italy’s economic sectors and IEG promotes it in all the industries in which it operates with its exhibitions, thanks to skills developed in 25 years of leadership at Ecomondo. The Ecomondo trade event,” he explained, “has become a reference platform for the circular economy and a guide for ecological transition for the entire Mediterranean basin and the rest of Europe.” Peraboni supported his assertion by citing the National Report on the Circular Economy 2022, which was drafted by the Circular Economy Network (CEN), an Italian group promoted by the Foundation for Sustainable Development. This report noted that, “Italy has for some years now been the European leader in terms of recycling rate and the main circularity indicators.” (Note: IEG is also among the promoters of CEN.

Environmentally Responsible And Sustainable Practices

At Vicenzaoro, Peraboni elaborated, the discussion of environmentally responsible business practices “benefits from the most authoritative players in the gold and jewellery industries. For example,” he said, “while on the topic of the Mediterranean, it is worth remembering the important work of Assocoral, which, starting from Torre del Greco, the world-famous coral and cameo district, has made a decisive contribution to spreading sustainable coral harvesting, traceability and certification practices.” Then again, the IEG has been in a partnership with CIBJO since 2009 because “CIBJO has always been committed to collecting and disseminating global best practices that steer the jewelry industry towards sustainable development.”

The Jewellery Technology Forum

Along with being committed to imparting information about sustainable practices, Vicenzaoro January 2023 also presented the Jewellery Technology Forum (JTF). For the past ten years, this seminar has been organized by the Vicenza-based Legor Group in collaboration with IEG. With innovation as its focus, JTF was a high-powered training event, helmed by researchers and experts from Europe and overseas, with talks on processing and technological applications, research and development on alloys and new materials, phygital jewelry and the digital transformation of certifications, plus economic-financial trends and sustainability in jewelry.

As Legor Group’s marketing director Fabio Di Falco noted, “It is necessary to pool the experience gained by the sector’s players.” During the Jewellery Technology Forum, responsible practices and 3D printing with precious metals formed two key areas of discussion. Key topics of the forum included metallurgical know-how, chemistry for jewelry and accessory making, and the state of the art of additive manufacturing in jewelry, including possibilities offered by 3D printing with the “Binder Jet” technique using precious metals instead of polymers. This latter topic was presented by Alejandra De La Hija from HP and Andrea Friso from Legor Group, which has been utilizing this revolutionary technique since 2022.

D’Orica First B-Corp Certified Italian Jewelry Company

Other key presentations at JTF included the case history of D’orica, the first Italian jewelry company to obtain B-corp certification, which was recounted by D’Orica’s founder Giampietro Zonta. This certification means that a business has been found by a third-party certification organization to meet high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on such factors as supply chain practices and input materials, employee benefits and charitable giving. In order to achieve certification, a company must deliver high social and environmental performance and legally commit to changing their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, rather than just shareholders. The company must also allow information about their performance measured against the certification organization’s standards to be publicly available on their B Corp profile on the organization’s website.

Breakthroughs In 3-D Jewelry Printing, Customized Surfaces And Desktop Laser Welding Machines

More intriguing news came from Caurum, a company from Arezzo, Italy, which has developed technologies for the recovery, refining and transformation of jewelry sector waste, such as precious alloys, and goldsmith sweepings. Then there was DWS, which presented novel applications and technologies for 3D cluster printing for direct micro casting (XCluster) and pre-moulded chain printing (XCluster Chain). DWS also revealed applications and technologies for the printing of finished products with transparent textures and surfaces that reproduce ceramics, or are suitable for customization through classic treatments. Of special interest to goldsmiths and watchmakers were the welding and marking machines from Orotig. These included the EVO X, a new breed of compact and powerful desktop laser welding machines that embody advanced technologies with state-of-the-art cooling systems to meet the needs of goldsmiths and watchmakers.

Research and technological innovation inspired yet another Vicenzaoro initiative, titled “Startup & Carats”. Showing at Vicenza for the fifth time, this project was mounted by ITA, the Italian Trade Agency, together with Italian Exhibition Group, It exhibited breakthroughs from the sector’s most innovative start-ups and SMEs. Prototyping and jewelry production, precious stone diagnostics, analysis of tradeshow stand attendance data, point of sale management in a web environment, market entry and fundraising were covered by the companies involved. Participants in this project are geared towards promoting development of the industry through product and process innovation and with the help of innovative digital services.

AI-Powered Diamond Scanners And Other New Tools

For example, a diamond scanner that distinguishes between natural, simulants and lab grown diamonds thanks to artificial intelligence was presented by Diatech Pro. G-move showed how business intelligence can be fed with optimized data on visitor flows to exhibition stands, in compliance with privacy regulations. To start a business, jewellers need a suite of tools to create their own branded lines with the features they want, and Officina Orafa delivered the goods for this. While this writer attended Vicenzaoro January 2023 for four days, it was still impossible to visit all of the initiatives, talks, panel and booths that were of news value, for this is a show where new technologies rule and important announcements are made. Fortunately for those who couldn’t make it to the fair, or want to watch talks that they somehow missed, click here for the link.