The industrial area of Pantnagar is a five-minute drive from Ramnagar, Uttarakhand, home to the first agricultural university of India established in 1960. Here factories of companies like Tata Motor, Bajaj, Britannia and more, thrive.
Spread across five acres with 2.5 acres of buildup area for manufacturing and other services is the Tanishq Factory. It started production on March 29, 2012, with 30 employees and today, produces around 90 per cent of diamond products; the solitaire being the prime focus.
However, the brand is slowly shifting towards producing more high-value jewellery, and few of us from the media were given a peek into the operations.
For a factory dealing with tons of gold and diamond, security is of utmost importance. Leaving behind anything metal, we wore long coats and slippers, and were pre-warned that these would collect some gold dust.
Then, accompanied by Angelo Lawrence, senior manager of this Tanishq Jewellery Plant, we set out on the factory tour.
Our first stop was the New Product Development, where designers convert sketches into virtual 3D jewellery using a highly innovative jewellery design software, Matrix.
The 3D prints are then made into liquid moulds and replicated in wax. Sharing how the plant is very particular about the technology they use, Lawrence said, “The wax injectors are imported from Italy and the wax used to make the cast is from America. Also, we check the quality of the product after every completed process.”
To make production efficient, a wax tree is made with wax prototypes of the desired jewellery pieces attached to it.
The real factory feel comes once you enter the casting department where the flask is prepared.
The wax tree is placed in the flask and Plaster of Paris is poured into it. Once the plaster is set, the flask is kept in the rotary furnace – a German import – for 16 hours at a consistent temperature.
Next, a machine pumps the mix of gold and alloys into the flask and voila, your gold tree is ready. However, the real work by hand starts in the refining process where jewellery pieces cut from the tree are polished and the stones are set.
To highlight the diamond and for prolonged shimmer, rhodium polish is done by either pen plating or dip plating. Once it’s complete the only thing left is branding the piece through laser. This is how every Tanishq jewellery is made.
129 girls out of 221 employees
Once we reached the refining process, one thing that struck the most was how the floor was dominated by women. Out of 221 employees, the factory currently employs 129 women. Diksha Sharma, 28, is among those who joined the factory when it initially started.
“Life wasn’t easy back then. After my father expired, mother was the sole breadwinner of the family, and I wanted to contribute,” says the girl from Rudrapur.
Money constraints meant her house lacked the basic facilities. “Only after two years of working here could I get a toilet built in the house. Today I’m married and have a family, and also take care of my mother,” adds Sharma.
Shobha Arya, 27, too has a similar story. Arya is the first girl from her village, Gangolihat, to have left home to work. “Our life was hard. My two sisters and I would wake up at 4 am to get drinking water.”
She breaks into tears while sharing how she wanted to become a social worker and the time she was scolded in her school for not being able to pay her class tenth exam fee.
However, over the years, along with mastering the art of working with diamonds, she also completed her post-grad in sociology. Joining in the same chorus is Geetanjali who is currently pursuing her Masters and working full time at the factory.
For the workers, the factory is a family away from home. They have a 30-minute long yoga session before work and for those who want can visit the gym after 5:00 pm. They have two exercise breaks in between work hours, when songs are played and the workers relax.
No gold wastage
Remember the coat and the slippers we changed into before the tour? Well, post the tour these and other elements in contact with gold are sent to a recovery centre and incinerated for eight hours to save every possible speck of gold.
This is followed by a smelting process where borax is added to ashes with calcium fluoride. Then is the process of Aqua regia (Latin phrase meaning kings’ water to denote the dissolving of noble metals gold and platinum into water).
What emerges is pure gold. While the brand annually uses just 40 per cent recycled gold, they want to further develop their recovery process to make it 100 per cent reusable.