Gold producer AngloGold Ashanti believes that it has to nurture the jewellery industry as it comprises about 43% of the company’s gold market.
Further, a continuous decline in gold jewellery production would also lead to a decline in gold demand, AngloGold Ashanti stakeholder relations and marketing executive VP Yedwa Simelane said at an AngloGold Ashanti AuDITIONS gold design seminar held in Johannesburg recently.
AuDITIONS is a global gold-design competition, established in 1999 and currently being held in South Africa and Brazil. It is aimed at promoting creativity and innovation in gold design and empowering young, emerging and professional jewellery designers.
Through this competition, the company aimed to support better design in gold so that South African-made jewellery could be seen as an attractive product, as opposed to simply exporting the gold to be processed elsewhere, she said.
“To AngloGold Ashanti, beneficiation means undertaking projects such as AuDITIONS, caring for our metal, encouraging design and teaching people. If we, as a gold house, do not do this, it becomes difficult for other parties to put money into such programmes,” Simelane explained.
She pointed out that the South African competition had a developmental and an educational approach, compared with the Brazilian competition, which could not be entered by students.
Meanwhile, Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu said at last year’s AuDITIONS 2011/12 Gold Design Awards and Collection launch event that government welcomed AngloGold Ashanti’s efforts, “as beneficiation, as stated in government policies, was being implemented”.
She also stated that there was more to the AngloGold Ashanti AuDITIONS competition than simply jewellery and design. It was about how South Africa could leverage its competi- tive advantages, minerals and people to diversify and transform its economy.
The theme for the AuDITIONS 2013/14 competition is Celestial Origins, drawing inspiration from the story of how gold arrived on earth from the core of a star. The inherent value of gold is amplified by its celestial, divine and almost otherworldly properties that journeyed across the universe and were passed down to earth – much like ancestry and cultural traditions are passed down from one generation to the next.