Hong Kong Fair Prioritizes Buyer Incentives

The organizers of the September Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair rejected the trade's request for a discount, executives confirmed Wednesday.The Hong Kong Jewelry Manufacturers' Association (HKJMA) had asked Informa Markets for a 25% reduction in exhibitors' fees due to the uncertainty arising from protests in the city. But the company chose instead to provide incentives for buyers to attend, such as funding 10,000 hotel rooms for exhibitors' clients, executives at Informa explained."The amount of value [exhibitors] can get from [those efforts] is far more than what they'd get from a discount," Celine Lau, Informa's director of jewelry fairs, told Rapaport News at the show. However, the company agreed not to erase exhibitors' seniority status - the credits they receive for returning to the show year after year - if they skipped this week's event because of the political situation, Lau noted.Diamond trade associations in India, Israel and Belgium had lobbied Informa to postpone the show, but doing so would have been a negative move as the fair is a key event for sourcing goods ahead of the holiday season, she added."Missing the opportunity would mean the jewelry community missing the last chance for getting business," Lau said. "We're aware the incidents in Hong Kong affected confidence, but we're very proud of the commitment of our business partners. We've received concerns about whether the show should go ahead as planned. We cannot afford to compensate the business losses of our exhibitors if we are not going to go ahead to make the show happen."The finished-jewelry exhibition opened Wednesday at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in the Wan Chai district, and runs until Sunday. The loose-diamond section of the fair began on Monday at AsiaWorld-Expo near the municipality's airport, and will end on Friday. GIA upgrades synthetics screenerThe GIA unveiled an upgrade to its iD100 testing machine that enables screening of pink diamonds for synthetics.The device separates natural diamonds from lab-grown stones, simulants, and treated diamonds, said Wuyi Wang, the GIA's vice president of research and development, in a presentation at the show Tuesday.Customers can download the extension from the GIA's online store for a fee, or obtain it preinstalled when they buy an iD100 device. The institute has also added a free update to the iD100 that enables screening of blue-to-green and brown diamonds, it said earlier this month.Scientist recounts hunt for green diamondsA gemologist from Liechtenstein went in search of green diamonds at museums to help expand the industry's knowledge of the rare colored stones. The category is notoriously hard to learn about because the diamonds are so scarce.Dr. Thomas Hainschwang and his team tested hundreds of specimens to find clues about how to separate diamonds with natural color from those that have been treated. The project took him to the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria, and its counterpart in London. He showcased his story and findings at the fair on Tuesday in an event organized by the Natural Color Diamond Association.Museums are a reliable source of naturally colored diamonds if their collections predate modern treatments, explained Hainschwang, director and cofounder of GGTL Laboratories. They protect their exhibits closely, and would never allow a stone to leave the premises, so the chance of any treatment having occurred is essentially zero, he noted. In addition, many of the items he inspected came with original catalogs stating the provenance and other details of the diamonds.His work also involved testing known treated diamonds, as well as performing treatments on stones to assess what happens to them.Image: The registration hall at the finished-jewelry exhibition which opened at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on Wednesday (Informa Markets).