Jewellery

Hong Kong's jewelry industry mainly consists of two sectors, namely imitation (costume) jewelry and precious jewelry. The latter includes gold ornament, jade, pearl, precious stone and gem-setting.

The jewellery industry is a labour-intensive industry. Work processes, such as smelting, mould making, welding, gem-setting are mostly manual operations. However, Casting, pre-polishing, engraving and electroplating have been automated with the use of wax casting facilities, polishers, electroplating equipment and electric furnace. A number of larger establishments have made use of sophisticated and computerized equipment such as vacuum casting machines, computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems, as well as computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools, so as to achieve massive production and enhance design ability.

Combined with re-exports, Hong Kong is the fourth largest exporter of precious jewelry behind Italy, Switzerland and the UK. Domestic exports of jewelry stood at HK$4,789 million in 1999, churned out by 911 establishments with a total of 6,177 workers.

　

Surrounded by an assortment of semi-precious gemstones, a craftsman preparing the components for a necklace outlines a shape on a piece of malachite.		Hong Kong designers have won an international reputation for their creative designs and their ability to work with a variety of precious and semi-precious materials.

A goldsmith is carefully pouring melted gold into a mould to form a 5-tael gold block.

A technician is engraving a piece of rose quartz.

Cutting jade correctly is a skilled art.