World Pearl Kingdom
If you want to sell pearls, or work in a pearl-based business, you must constantly seek out the highest quality of pearls, and ask which country is best to buy pearls?
Then you must know that far away in mainland China, there is a beautiful city where the world’s best and cheapest pearls are imported.
Zhuji City, Zhejiang Province, China is the origin of the global pearl boom. Zhuji, the ancient capital of Yue, the hometown of Xi Shi, with a long history and humanities, is China’s largest freshwater pearl production base, the world-famous ‘Pearl Township’, and has been described by Forbes as the best business city in mainland China.
The town of Shanxiahu is located in the northeastern part of Zhuji, a town with an area of less than 50 square kilometres, which contributes 80% of China’s freshwater pearls and 70% of the world’s freshwater pearls. Images of ‘pearl merchants’ from all over the world carrying suitcases and making purchases are staged every day in Shanxiahu Town.
A veritable global pearl centre：
From the 1960s and 1970s when the first pearl farmers raised mussels and cultivated pearls, to 1985 when the first generation of pearl market was built, to 2008 when the world’s largest freshwater pearl trading market – East China International Jewellery City – was built, to today’s new market of e-commerce retailing that has seen the emergence of a thousand anchors… …
After more than sixty years of development, Zhuji has become the country’s largest freshwater pearl farming, R & D, processing, trading base, with more than 9,000 various types of pearl market players, as well as one listed company (Thousand Foot Group), Ruanshi, Angel’s Tear, Yida and a number of leading enterprises in the industry, the annual production and sales of pearls exceeded 50 billion yuan, pearl production and sales accounted for 80% of the country’s and 73% of the world’s pearl, and has become the World Pearl Congress Permanent site.
Zhuji’s pearl industry chain model:
Where can I get a glimpse of the whole industry chain development status of Zhuji pearl?
We are in East China International Jewellery City, opened a corner of the whole industrial picture of Zhuji pearl. Only to see, large and small shops lined up, from bulk pearl wholesale to hardware packaging accessories, from pearl processing to pearl finished products, a variety of pearl-related products, a wide range of products, and even a testing centre, sorting and processing workshops, warehouses and other supporting areas.
As long as the style is selected, the rest of the processing, setting, packaging, mailing, etc., can be reached here in one-stop. At the same time, at present, more than 3,000 merchants are stationed in East China International Jewellery City, and the stationing rate has grown from 60% to 120%; the city’s active live broadcasting rooms on platforms such as Jitterbug, Shutterbug, Taobao, Jingdong and so on are more than 5,000, and nearly 15 million packages are sent out from Shanshimihu throughout the year.
And this is just a small profile of Zhuji pearl characteristics of industrial cluster construction.
According to statistics, up to now, zhuji has all kinds of pearl business subjects more than 9000, initially formed a pearl trade, pearl creative design, pearl biomedicine, pearl culture tourism as the core of the modern industry cluster.
In this process, Zhuji local enterprises with technological innovation, brand empowerment, design results, and continue to climb up the pearl value chain, playing Zhuji pearl global visibility and influence. For example, the enterprise independent research and development of ‘Edison’, ‘freshwater AK’ varieties, the quality is comparable to the ‘Australian white’ ‘akoya ‘and other well-known saltwater pearls, the original pearl added value of 30 per cent.
At the same time, Zhuji pearl’s international reputation is also getting bigger and bigger. Following the 2023 March Zhuji City for the first time to send ‘pearl group’, the group debut of the Hong Kong International Jewellery Show, in March this year, Zhuji again organised more than 350 enterprises, more than 800 jewellers group ‘strike’ Hong Kong International Jewellery Show, 51 enterprises with the Australia white, akoya, tahiti, gold beads on the same stage, promote zhuji pearl to become a national product ‘tide product’, to the world stage.
Not only that, Zhuji pearl also play a strong attraction to the high level of innovative talent, relying on pearl industry innovation service complex, engineers collaborative innovation centre and other carriers, the town of shanxiahu introduction of domestic and foreign jewellery designers more than 200, more and more k-gold, coloured gemstones, jade and other domestic and foreign big-name enterprises settled.
Environmentally friendly new technology for pearl farming:
Continuous ponds as far as the eye can see, cultured pearls suspended automatic lifting hanging device horizontal and vertical, beads into a line, the breeze on the surface, rippling waves, the fish in the water to leap. This is the ‘Chinese pearl Zhuji’ unique scene, and this pool of clear water, subverted the pearl mussel breeding pool of previous knowledge.
By encouraging enterprises to develop automated feeding systems, the application of Internet of Things integration technology, the introduction of digital water quality monitoring system, focusing on the promotion of intelligent ecological farming model, effectively cracking the high-density farming, excessive baiting and fertiliser brought about by environmental pollution and quality and efficiency of the problem is not high.
The use of intelligent bio-chain water treatment-targeted feeding system, small to two or three acres, large to thousands of acres of breeding area of pearl mussels can achieve accurate feeding, intelligent care, and effectively solve the contradiction between pearl farming and water protection.
Traditional farming methods only produce 1,000 pearls per mu, and now it can be as high as 6,000-10,000, with an output value of 200,000 yuan per mu.
In the microbiological workshop, the bait required by the pearl mussels can be cultivated; in the control room, the feeding interval of the pearl mussels is set by the operator who opens the cultivation automation system. After that, without workers, the bait will be automatically transported to the corresponding feeding area according to the instructions, so that each pearl mussel can achieve accurate feeding, intelligent care. The technology is also in recent years Zhuji pearl farming mode from the traditional crude to technology, ecological transformation of the epitome.
At the same time, the waters here are now raising pearls with a more translucent colour and lustre, producing pearls with improved diameter, body colour, finish and other indicators.
Pearl’s e-commerce sales are booming:
In recent years, Zhuji pearl industry by the power of e-commerce, innovative models, attract traffic, expand the market, the successful creation of Xingda Hui live e-commerce base and East China International Jewellery City live e-commerce base, the introduction of Taobao, Jitterbug, fast hand and other five live platforms, pearl sales from the offline to the online.
Many pearl merchants in Yamashita Lake broaden the pearl sales market by live broadcasting on the e-commerce platform. ‘At present, East China International Jewellery City has 1,000 shops offline, plus a total of more than 5,000 online, merchants will organise their own net red live with goods, a single live sales up to tens of millions.
With the continued popularity of the live economy, Zhuji pearl popularity is getting higher and higher, in the jitterbug hot topics about ‘Zhuji / pearl’ topic of the playback of the heat accumulated more than 110 million times, the highest topic of the heat ‘buy pearl to Zhuji’ reached 54.74 million heat value. Keeping pace with the times, Zhuji, a small city in central Zhejiang with a young, fashionable and international style, is blossoming because of pearls.
The latest data shows that from January to November 2023, sales of the pearl industry in Zhuji City reached 50.9 billion yuan, up 56.7 per cent year-on-year, with online sales of 28.1 billion yuan, up 53.5 per cent year-on-year. ‘The mayor of Zhuji will lead a team to participate in the Hong Kong International Jewellery Show in March 2024, and the annual World Pearl Congress will be held in May. Yamashita Lake will continue to expand and strengthen the pearl business segment, and continue to go out of the country to expand international influence.
At the same time, Zhuji continue to release the pearl spillover effect, invested 2 billion yuan to build pearl museum, pearl culture block, pearl living room and other key projects more than a hundred, to create a set of ‘pearl industry + characteristics of tourism + Internet + cultural creativity’ in one of the characteristics of the town, industrial support is becoming more and more perfect. Here you can not only directly in the base to pick mussels, open pearl, but also live to watch the production process of pearl jewellery, very interesting.
From sowing the first pearl mussel to contribute to 70% of the world’s freshwater pearls; from breeding pollution to green development; from 20 years ago, the output value of only 1.52 billion yuan to today’s output value exceeded 50 billion yuan; from the original pearl to the world-renowned ‘Pearl Township of China’, now Zhuji, is constantly optimising the extension of the pearl industry chain, value chain, and accelerating the expansion of the beautiful pearl global industry map. Accelerate the expansion of the beautiful pearl global industrial map, running out of high-quality development acceleration.
