New Shree Ramkrishna Factory Will Boost Consumer Confidence: Varda Shine
April 13, 11Rahul Dholakia (L-R), Govind Dholakia and Varda Shine at the SRK factory openning |
“This new facility,” Shine added, “with its modern facilities, will go a long way towards increasing consumer confidence in diamonds.”
Shine noted that the Shree Ramkrishna Group, with its workforce of 5,000, is a known name in corporate social responsibility, going a long way towards bolstering the consumer’s trust in diamonds.
In his remarks, group chairman Govind Dholakia said the factory was the outcome of a dream that began three years ago and was interrupted by the global financial crisis.
He observed with pride that the factory was a new benchmark in diamond processing. He noted that despite the much ballyhooed progress of other manufacturing centers such as China, nothing could touch India’s dominant position in diamond manufacturing for the next 20 years. “It isn’t about the machines you use or the systems you have in place,” he said, “diamond manufacturing has to be in your blood. It runs deep in the veins of the Indian workforce.”
Elaborating on the point, he observed that when he first came to Surat as a poor boy seeking to earn a living by polishing diamonds, there weren’t more than 200 diamond polishers in the entire city. Today, he said, the huge workforce in Surat alone accounted for 85 of every 100 diamonds in the world. “Everybody else has had a chance to use the technology and systems that we use,” he said, “but it is something about the culture of understanding diamonds that has allowed this great dominance to develop.”
According to Dholakia, the new factory, set to polish 0.30 carats and up, has an annual processing capacity of some 336,000 carats.