South Africa’s premier yearly platinum jewellery design and manufacturing competition, PlatAfrica, has opened for entries from professional and student designers.

Now in its twenty-fourth year, this year's iteration also includes the introduction of capsule collections and collaboration with De Beers Group, which will loan selected diamonds to competition winners for showcasing in their platinum collections.

PlatAfrica is hosted by Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), Metal Concentrators and Platinum Guild International (PGI) India.

Amplats' collaboration with fellow Anglo American group subsidiary De Beers is expected to help to further expose premium South African jewellery collections to the global market.

The theme for this year’s edition of PlatAfrica is #Emergence, calling for designs "drawing from uncharted territories to create pieces that inspire and resonate with customers, while also pointing to the promise of better things to come", the organisers state.

They add that entrants will be challenged to think commercially, through the use of their bespoke competition pieces to conceptualise a capsule collection (ring, earring, neckpiece and armpiece) that can be manufactured and sold to a broader global market.

The top ten winners in both the professional and student categories will have the opportunity to then manufacture their capsule collections for inclusion in the PlatAfrica collection, which will then be available for sale in the international market.

“PlatAfrica is very close to my heart as it provides an important and much-needed opportunity for designers to create statement jewellery pieces with platinum, thereby developing their design and manufacturing skills. I am also very excited that we are able to collaborate with De Beers so that our designers can have access to the brilliance of diamonds and be further encouraged to think globally about consumer demand trends,” says Amplats CEO Natascha Viljoen.

“De Beers Group is very passionate about creating beneficiation pipelines in the regions where we operate. We believe in supporting local talent in the countries where we discover diamonds, and we hope that bringing De Beers diamonds to PlatAfrica will help inspire South Africa’s outstanding jewellery designers and jewellery manufacturers to maximise their creative artistry,” adds De Beers Group managed operations MD Moses Masondo.

PGI CEO Huw Daniel comments that the collaboration between Amplats and De Beers creates a "great platform for platinum to shine within the international jewellery industry".

Metal requests for entry must be submitted by June 2 and participants must submit their final design pieces by July 28.