Follow That Stone: Ressigeac Gems Traceability Project

"Tracing the path of a colored stone through the vast and largely unpoliced gem trade is a complicated affair, even for the experts," I wrote "Unlike diamonds, most of which are marketed by a handful of mining juggernauts through a supply chain that is under increasing scrutiny, gems follow a haphazard and opaque route to market that lends itself to smuggling." "That has not discouraged a growing number of gem cutters, dealers, jewelry manufacturers and retailers from demanding to know that the gems they buy and sell have been handled with social and environmental integrity." Take the latest such effort to appear on my radar: Ressigeac Gems' new traceability project, in collaboration with the Swiss Gemmological Institute SSEF In June, Philippe and Veronica Ressigeac, founders of Bangkok-based Ressigeac Gems, purchased a lot of rough Mozambican rubies at the Gemfields auction in Singapore and embarked on a pilot project with SSEF to document each step of the rubies' journey to market.

"We work mostly with luxury brands and the general impulse for going toward traceability and sustainability is coming from the end consumer of luxury products, which are more and more requesting transparency on the supply chain and want to know that the stones they purchased are not coming from a conflict area and/or damaged the environment," Ressigeac says Over the past decade, the gem trade has failed to gather the momentum it needs to make traceability standard operating procedure Top image: Rough and polished rubies, courtesy of Ressigeac Gems. Source