IDAR-OBERSTEIN, Germany (dpa) – Mention the name Idar-Oberstein, and most Germans will think immediately about precious stones.
This hasn’t changed over the past few years even though, as mayor Otto Dickenscheid acknowledges, fewer people are visiting the town, some 100 kilometres southwest of Frankfurt, than in times past. One reason could be the pressure of competition from “cheap suppliers” from abroad, says Joerg Lindemann, managing director of the Diamond and Precious Stones Exchange in Idar-Oberstein. Since 1990 about 60 companies have closed down. All the same, however, Idar-Oberstein is still considered to be the most important site for the European precious stones industry, which according to Dickenscheid provides a livelihood for one out of every five persons in the town. The figures are still impressive concerning the local precious stones and jewelry workshops: nearly 500 companies saw to it that in 1999 more than half of the 400 million marks (186 million dollars) precious stones industry turnover in Germany was accounted for by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate where Idar-Oberstein is located. The state’s official statistics office has reported preliminary data that at least for those outfits with more than 20 employees, turnover growth last year was in the single digits. Lindemann says that the process of weeding out in the market has now been completed, even though the small companies are still feeling the pinch from foreign competitors, above all from Russia. In order to preserve the industry’s competitiveness, in 1990 Rhineland-Palatinate state established the research institute for mineral- and metals-based materials for precious stones and metals, FEE. The facility now has 25 employees. “In addition, we wanted to help out those companies which saw no further prospects in the classic precious stones processing sector by opening up new paths in this technology,” said Ulrich Mueller, an official at the state’s Economics Ministry in Mainz. Among other things, FEE produces crystals for new laser technology. Stones must still be drilled and polished, but this has little to do with the classic methods of processing precious stones for making jewelry. Andreas Becker, a precious stone polisher, continues to produce jewelry, and like many of his colleagues he has seen better times. Most recently, sluggish Christmas season business had a negative impact on the goldsmiths. “At the moment there aren’t going to be any big jumps in sales,” says Becker, who works in his family-owned business which is now 110 years old. “Our industry produces luxury items. You quickly notice it when people have less money.” He declines to go into details about his business situation or sales figures. “Nobody here puts their figures out in the open. The sector is serious and discreet,” comments Lindemann of the precious stones exchange and who also heads the German Precious Stones and Diamond Industry Federation. But in general, he says, things are again starting to move slightly forward, with employment and sales having improved somewhat over the past five years. Some companies which recognised new trends in jewelry tastes were even doing “outstanding” business. Like all the other outfits in Idar-Oberstein, Becker gets his raw materials from abroad, chiefly Japan, the United States and Canada. Commercial precious stones mining in the town on the Nahe River was shut down as early as 1870 after major precious stones deposits were discovered in Brazil. Today, the only scraping for precious stones in the local mines in the Steinkaulenberg mountain are only tourists. Wearing helmets and hammering away, they are looking for agates, for which the region originally became known.
