Waiting to shine again

Key players still feel the time is right to revive Tiruchi’s once-thriving synthetic gems industry

August 22, 2014 05:27 pm | Updated 05:27 pm IST - Tiruchirapalli

Unpolished synthetic corundum stones at Sri Krishna Gems Company. Photo: R.M. Rajarathinam

Unpolished synthetic corundum stones at Sri Krishna Gems Company. Photo: R.M. Rajarathinam

It’s hard to believe that the polished stones being shown to you are not the real thing. But they are as one of the assembled gentlemen puts it, “the real duplicate of the real diamond.”

The mood is sombre at a recent gathering of the All India Synthetic Gems Manufacturers and Dealers Association, where the slow death of the once-thriving industry is being discussed.

Once known as ‘Rangoon diamonds’ from their manufacturing base in Burma (Myanmar), the synthetic stone industry in Tiruchi employed at least three lakh people – manufacturers, traders and rural workers - at its peak in the mid-1990s. “There used to be no place to stand in the Big Bazaar during the weekends,” recalls Mr. Rengarajan, a fifth-generation trader in synthetic stones, and vice-president of the association. “There used to be 3000 stores in this very street, with manufacturers queuing up to drop off their consignments. Now we have just 200 stores left in the business.”

A recent Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) study has found that only around 10,000 people are involved in the industry now.

Synthetic gemstones are an eco-friendly alternative (with the same chemical compositions and crystal structures) to precious and semi-precious stones that rely on quarrying. Created by the fusion and crystallisation under high pressure of certain chemicals, artificial gems are more common than we think – not just in jewels, clothing, plastic and leather goods, but also in industrial tools and like engraving blades, thread guides for the textile industry, in optics and so on.

So why is this trade, thought to have a market value worth Rs.500 crores, dying out in Tiruchi, where it has been ascertained to have originated around 1881?

Losing lustre

“Once, the ‘Tiruchi kamalam’ was synonymous with high quality,” says Mr. M.R. Venugopal, secretary of the association. His father, M. Ramasamy Chettiar is credited with transferring the technology of making ‘Rangoon diamonds’ from Swiss raw material to the city and standardising gemstone sale process after working for the merchant Chona Arunachalam Chettiar in Burma in the 1920s. “Nowadays, because of inferior raw material, the stones are not of the same quality. Moreover, cheaper imports from China have flooded the market, forcing many people to quit the business. If we don’t do something soon, it will die,” he adds.

But the association members agree that local players may too have had a role in the industry’s decline, especially by failing to keep up with technological advancements in the field. “Producing the stones was a manual process initially,” says Mr. K.P. Annamalai, proprietor of Annam Impex, that manufactures calibrated cubic zirconia stones. “The only major change came in the 1990s, in the form of a semi-automatic Korean spindle machine. China, on the other hand, has two types of machines, one for mass production of up to 90 stones, and the other for more exclusive products of one or two per cycle,” he adds.

Mr. Annamalai should know. He was part of a delegation that participated in a ‘study tour’ to Wuzhou city in Guangxi province in China under the auspices of the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council in January this year.

“The first thing we realised was the difference in raw material – our suppliers seem to be selling us inferior stuff at inflated prices in India,” says Mr. Annamalai. Even if this is rectified by direct sourcing, he says the Tiruchi stones still stand little chance in front of the Chinese behemoth. “Manufacture there is in a cluster arrangement – slicing, pre-forming and polishing are separated to streamline the production process, which doesn’t exist in India. The lack of automation means we cannot provide accurately calibrated stones to order in big numbers. Indian jewellers these days are opting for automated production as well, and the cheaper Chinese stones fit their requirements because they are calibrated down to the millimeter,” he says.

The China visit has revived the association’s spirits somewhat, though a post-tour report presented by the delegation to the government has yet to bear any fruit. “Our tour gave us two inputs – we need to import the latest machines from China or at least replicate them here. Secondly we need good quality raw material,” says Mr. Annamalai, who agrees that little can be done without support from the authorities.

Plotting the way out

Synthetic gemstone producers in Tiruchi are now concentrating on artificial corundum, from whose crystals a scarlet stone that can be equated to the ‘manickam’ (ruby), is obtained. First produced commercially by Auguste Verneuil in 1903 by fusing barium flouride with aluminium oxide and a trace of chromium at a high temperature (above 2000 degree Centigrade), the red stones are harder to find in the market than the white-coloured cubic zirconia (American Diamond).

The corundum was being produced by the Indo-Swiss Synthetic Gem Manufacturing Co. of Mettupalayam during the heyday of the industry. This stopped after the company shut down operations over a decade ago due to environment concerns and financial problems. “If the company could be revived, we would be able to cut down our costs, otherwise we have to rely on raw material from China,” says Mr. Annamalai.

“I wouldn’t mind paying more for good quality raw material from China,” says Mr. Krishna Kumar, who has been running the Sri Krishna Gems Company from a workshop above his home in the No.1 Toll Gate area since 1994. “We are buying 1kg of bad ‘rough’ [industry parlance for raw material] for Rs.6,300, from our local suppliers whereas the best quality costs in the region of Rs.4,300 in China,” he adds.

Before mechanisation, Mr. Krishna Kumar says he’d produce 3,000 stones to get 300 of a particular measurement, using sieves to manually grade the size. “The Chinese have even stopped some of faceting that we do here – there’s no work on the ‘girdle’ and ‘table’ of the stone, but they are winning due to the pricing and accuracy,” he rues.

Krishna Kumar and his brother Nanda Kumar were doing well up to 2000, when they had 45 workers, each with a minimum salary of Rs.3000. Today, after spending at least Rs.60 lakhs of rupees on research and development (and mortgaging their house), their workshop has seven units with around 10 to 12 lower-paid workers, each of who can supervise two machines simultaneously.

“We use a combination of old and new technology,” says Nanda Kumar, who confesses he once ground raw material worth Rs. 2 lakhs to dust to find the right process, “but we could do better if the government supported us as a legitimate industry.”

“The Tiruchi synthetic gemstones industry is a good way to generate jobs for school-leavers and rural women,” says Mr. S. Venugopal, former president of the association. “The government should think of setting up a board for our industry, along the lines of what they have done for coffee and tea, to ensure its proper development. We haven’t been able to get the proper support from the authorities despite our many, many requests.”

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