Last week, in an industrial park on the northern fringe of Ho Chi Minh City, Pandora chief executive Berta de Pablos-Barbier stood alongside Vietnamese officials to unveil the first piece of jewellery the Danish company has ever made outside Thailand.

The group has spent US$150 million on the 7.5-hectare plant in Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park III, which it describes as the world’s largest fine jewellery crafting facility. At full capacity, it can produce up to 60 million pieces a year, lifting the group’s manufacturing capacity by about 50 per cent, and it will employ 7000 people once fully staffed. 

But the investment raises an awkward timing question: Pandora is adding capacity for a growth spurt that has not yet arrived. The company expects organic revenue growth of up to 3 per cent this year, and it has told investors its operating margin will dip in 2027 as cheaper silver hedges roll off.

At the opening ceremony, Pablos-Barbier said the plant will help the company reduce its reliance on a single country and leave room for growth management it expects to come. Pandora may be the world’s biggest jewellery brand, she added, but it holds only about 2 per cent of the global market.

Thailand has been the Danish group’s sole manufacturing site since 1989 with three plants and about 13,000 employees. The neighbouring country, Vietnam, is now the company’s insurance, as it avoids dependence on a single manufacturing site. 

According to Denmark’s ambassador Lina Gandløse Hansen, Danish manufacturers are increasingly considering Vietnam as a sourcing market because of its access to renewable energy.

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