Gems and Jewellery Sourcing: Three Trades That Share One Name

Updated: 5 Oct 2026

In April 2024 a US buyer posted a short complaint on a lab-grown diamond forum. "I tried approaching two wholesalers with my LLC and they still quoted the higher prices" (r/labdiamond, April 2024 (opens in a new tab)). They had a company, a plan and a supplier list. What they didn't have was standing in a trade that runs on relationships and volume, and nothing in their research had told them that.

That's the trouble with the phrase "gems and jewellery". It joins three trades that work in completely different ways. Cut diamonds are a dealer trade. Fine jewellery is a manufacturing trade with precious metal at its heart. Fashion jewellery is a consumer-goods trade with a chemistry problem. Searches blur them, and buyers walk into the wrong one. This page separates them, maps where each is made with India as the worked example, and shows what to test and what your border wants. The caveat is that fine jewellery and loose stones travel by air, which shipping records don't cover, so our supplier-level data is thinner here than for rugs or furniture. And we publish no prices.

SourcingFrom Intelligence

India's strength is stones, and its jewellery share is falling in the US. India supplied 46.1% of US diamond imports in 2025, 62.2% of Australia's and 24.8% of the UK's. In finished precious jewellery its US share fell from 24.1% in 2022 to 18.2% in 2025. (Our analysis of importer-reported data in UN Comtrade (opens in a new tab))
Shipping records can't vet a fine-jewellery supplier. From 2015 to September 2026, US sea records show only 58 shipments of Indian precious jewellery and 2,028 of imitation jewellery, because valuable goods fly. A supplier's absence from those records means nothing. (Our count of ImportYeti public pages, read 23 Sep 2026)
In fashion jewellery, the failure is the metal itself. Of 11 EU Safety Gate alerts on Indian jewellery from 2021 to September 2026, 7 were for cadmium, and six of those measured 38% to 95% cadmium by weight. That's an alloy choice, not a trace contaminant. The UK logged 10 heavy-metal cases on Indian jewellery and metalware in the same period, most stopped at the border. (Our pull of Safety Gate and OPSS records · Verified counts, Indicative reading)

What we don't know yet

Where India's silver and fashion jewellery is made by town. No official cluster list covers it.
Whether the US Section 301 exemptions cover diamonds. The list is printed as page images.
The formal export route and paperwork for small parcels of cut coloured stones.

1. Which Trade Are You In?

Start here, because everything else follows from the answer. This is one place a table earns its keep.

	Cut diamonds and coloured stones	Fine jewellery (gold, silver, set stones)	Fashion jewellery (base metal, imitation)
What you buy	Loose stones, graded and certified	Finished pieces in precious metal	Finished pieces in brass, zinc alloy or copper, plated
Indian centre	Surat for diamonds, natural and lab-grown. Jaipur for coloured stones	Mumbai, Jaipur and Surat (our working list, no official one exists)	Delhi and Noida, Jaipur, Mumbai, and a cluster of shippers in south Gujarat
How it moves	By air, often via Mumbai	By air	By sea, mostly from Nhava Sheva
Who it suits	Jewellers and dealers with trade standing	Brands and jewellers with assay and hallmark know-how	Ecommerce sellers, boutiques and wholesalers
What decides quality	The grading report, and who issued it	Metal purity, setting work, the hallmark	The alloy, the plating and the chemistry test

The Indian centres come from three sources. The government's export-town list names Surat for gems and jewellery, while Jaipur's listing is for handicrafts (DGFT, Appendix 1B (opens in a new tab)). The fashion-jewellery cities are where named US imitation-jewellery shippers are addressed (our count of ImportYeti pages). And the air route is visible in the cargo figures, because Surat's airport handled no international freight in FY2025-26, so its exports must leave through another airport, most likely Mumbai (our analysis of airport cargo data, Indicative).

Most small sellers belong in the third column, and many think they belong in the first. If you sell online at accessible prices, you're buying fashion or silver jewellery, and the fashion jewellery page is your next stop.

2. Diamonds: A Dealer Trade, Natural Or Lab-Grown

India's diamond business is a stone business. It cuts and polishes, and increasingly grows, and it sells to jewellers and dealers. Surat is its centre.

The lab-grown side is where new buyers arrive, and two forum patterns are worth knowing before you call anyone. First, the paperwork. Indian-grown lab diamonds usually come with IGI reports. One US buyer said "the best supplier we've found for labs is Indian and uses IGI certs" (r/labdiamond, May 2024 (opens in a new tab)), while a US retailer judged IGI about a grade more lenient than GIA, saying "you can get a D color from IGI and maybe GIA will grade it E color" (r/LabDiamonds, March 2024 (opens in a new tab)). Buyers still value IGI because it states whether a stone was grown by CVD or HPHT. Second, the method matters. Practitioners say "cheapest is usually CVD with post growth treatment" and that HPHT stones "will sometimes test as moissanite on most diamond testers" (r/LabDiamonds, March 2023 (opens in a new tab)). So ask for the growth method and any treatment on the report, not in the sales chat.

And the LLC buyer's lesson. Wholesale terms in this trade follow volume and standing, not company paperwork. The usual way in is a trade fair where dealers meet buyers, which in India is the IIJS series run by the export council GJEPC. The next Signature edition is in Mumbai in January 2027.

3. Coloured Stones: Jaipur, And The Certificate Problem

Jaipur's coloured-stone trade is real, old and open to foreign buyers who learn its habits. Wholesale happens in Johari Bazaar and the lane locals call Gopalji ka Rasta, and a 2015 visitor's warning still describes the risk: "many of them pass off coloured glass as gems" (TripAdvisor, 2015, archived (opens in a new tab)). The tourist route is worse. A UK buyer discovered at home in 2014 that a stone was "a "doublet" - a sapphire veneer on glass" (TripAdvisor, 2014, archived (opens in a new tab)). These accounts are old, but the pattern runs from 2011 to 2026 in our forum logs, which is why we include it.

The certificate doesn't save you on its own. Foreign buyers on a gemmology forum distrust small Jaipur labs. "It seems they open new labs every other week," one wrote (IGS forum, May 2021 (opens in a new tab)), and another sent a certified stone to GIA and it "came back glass" (IGS forum, June 2019 (opens in a new tab)). Low-priced rubies are often "heated, dyed, and glass-filled" (IGS forum, July 2022 (opens in a new tab)), and lead-glass filling takes the value close to nothing. One buyer on the same forum suggested the export council's own lab in Jaipur as an alternative to private ones.

None of this makes Jaipur's dealers dishonest as a group. The forums that carry these complaints carry satisfied buyers too. It makes the controls clear. Get a written treatment disclosure for every stone, use a laboratory your own customers recognise, and treat a certificate from an unfamiliar issuer as the seller's claim, not proof. Independent stone checks before payment are hands-on work, and SourcingSync (opens in a new tab) can arrange them.

4. Fashion Jewellery: Specify The Metal Before You Specify The Design

This is the trade most online sellers actually want, and its risk is chemistry. Diaspora buyers abroad already worry about it. "I don't wanna order something that has lead or something," one wrote (r/ABCDesis, November 2021 (opens in a new tab)). The regulators' records show they're right to ask. Cadmium dominated the EU's alerts on Indian jewellery, at concentrations that mean the metal itself was a cadmium alloy, and the UK stopped most of its heavy-metal cases at the border (Intelligence item 3 above).

Our reading is that the fix belongs in the purchase specification, not in end-of-line testing. A factory that casts in a cheap cadmium alloy will pass every visual check. So name the alloy in writing, ask for the plating spec, and have pieces screened for cadmium, lead and nickel release before shipment, with a lab confirming any XRF screen. If you sell children's jewellery in the US, the limit is 100 ppm total lead in accessible parts, and a Children's Product Certificate from an accepted lab is required (US CPSC (opens in a new tab)). The EU and UK limits and test plan for metal parts are on quality control in India.

In Jaipur, locals send retail shoppers to Bapu Bazaar for oxidised and artificial pieces and the Johari Bazaar lanes for bulk (r/jaipur, May 2024 (opens in a new tab)). That tells you where to look, not who's safe, so the alloy question goes to every supplier in either place.

5. At The Border

Duty on jewellery changed in two of our markets this year, in opposite directions.

UK. Chapter 71 lost the UK's developing-country preference for India from 1 January 2026 to the end of 2028 (GOV.UK graduation notice (opens in a new tab)), and the UK-India agreement now takes it to 0% with proof of origin. Without the proof, you pay the full rate. The proof rules are on India to the UK.
EU. India's GSP preference is suspended for pearls, precious stones and metals for 2026 to 2028 (Access2Markets (opens in a new tab)), so Indian jewellery pays the standard rate until the EU-India agreement is in force.
US. Indian goods pay the normal rate plus 10% under Section 301, and some goods are exempt. Whether your diamonds or jewellery line is one of them depends on a list we can't read, so check with your customs broker before you price (India to the US).

For natural diamonds, also ask your broker what conflict-diamond paperwork your market expects on the invoice, because that's checked at the border, not by us.

Questions Buyers Ask

Is India the place for cheap silver jewellery?

India is a major source. But a purity stamp on a piece is the seller's claim, so have pieces assayed, and see the fashion jewellery page for the specification.

Can I find Indian jewellery suppliers in shipping databases?

Fashion jewellery, partly, because it ships by sea. Fine jewellery and stones, almost never, because they fly. Use references, trade-fair history and an independent check instead.

Do I need to go to India to buy stones?

For coloured stones, the experienced foreign buyers in our forum logs go in person, and go back, because terms follow the relationship. For lab-grown diamonds, a trade fair is the usual door.

Which certificate should I accept?

The one your customers trust, issued by a laboratory you can verify, with the treatment or growth method written on it.

Back To The LLC Buyer

The US buyer with the LLC wasn't badly prepared for business. They were prepared for the wrong trade. Loose diamonds reward standing and volume, fine jewellery rewards metal and setting expertise, and fashion jewellery rewards a clean specification. Decide which column of the table you're in, and the right town, the right test and the right border rules follow. For how this industry sits among India's others, see India's export industries.