| I agree that it is impossible to tell the overall quality of a company’s pearls without direct examination and the Philippines do produce beautiful SSP's - especially Jewelmer. Jewelmer also spends the most on marketing, with extravagant displays in Hong Kong, hosting jazz festivals in the Philippines, and inviting authors to tour their farming areas.
But, the Philippines do have a long way to go to catch up to their Australian counterparts in terms of overall value. Although a lot of beautiful gems are coming out of the Philippines, the numbers still paint a different picture. The production estimates for 2005 (locally produced) for SSP's are 3.2m tons in Australian, 3.8 tons in Indonesia, and 1.7 tons in the Philippines.
This means that Indonesia is producing more than even Australia. This is not completely surprising as Indonesia relies heavily on a hatchery system while Australia is still dealing with a near-archaic quota system of 572,000 wild catch and 350,000 hatchery bred. But according to the numbers (and only taking into account these 3 SSP producing areas and not adding in the smaller areas and Myanmar) the percentages are as follows:
Indonesia produces 43.678 percent.
Australia produces 36.78 percent.
The Philippines produce 19.54 percent.
But what actually shows the value of the pearls is not the percentage of production; it is the total value of production compared with the percentage. The total estimated value of production is $248 million US dollars. The estimated value breakdown is as follows:
Australia's total value estimate is $123 million - 52.79%
Indonesia's total value estimation is $85 million - 36.48%
The Philippines total value estimation is $25 million - 10.73%
What this indicates is that although Australia only produces approximately 36% of the SSP's for these 3 regions, the overall quality of the goods produced command more than 50% of the market's value. This logically would indicate that the overall quality of SSP’s produced in Australia is better than those produced in other regions.
I would certainly not discount the pearls from Indonesia nor the Philippines, however. I have carried a lot of beautiful (especially the golden) pieces from these countries, and I think that although they are in the early stages they have a lot of growth potential and Australia will (and already does to a large extent) feel a lot of competition from them. |