PANDORA has opened its brand new crafting facility in Lamphun close to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. The new facility, which opened on 1 October, is now being ramped-up, ready to start commercial production at the start of next year.

When fully utilized, the site will employ up to 5,000 people, offering some of the best working conditions and most modern production facilities in Asia. It will set new standards for the jewellery industry in terms of scale, size, green profile and modernity. The new facility in Lamphun is one of three main projects in PANDORAs efforts to meet increasing demand.

“The site in Lamphun is the first of our recent initiatives to go live, but we are continuously expanding our production capacity, investing a total of DKK 1.8 billion in the period 2015 to 2019,” says Thomas Touborg, Senior Vice President, Group Operations.

Besides the new facility in Lamphun, the capacity expansion programme includes building an additional crafting facility in Gemopolis near Bangkok, as well as optimising the existing crafting facilities in Gemopolis.

“With these initiatives we will be able to potentially double our total production capacity compared to 2015 to more than 200 million pieces a year by the end of 2019, and we aim to reduce lead-time from raw material to jewellery delivered by around 50%,” said Thomas Touborg.

As part of the capacity expansion program, PANDORA will introduce flow principles in production to shorten lead-times by up to 50 percent. The capacity expansion programme involves three main projects: the new crafting facility in Lamphun, the new crafting facility in Gemopolis, Bangkok, called Triple A and the reconstruction and optimisation of existing crafting facilities in Gemopolis, Bangkok.