Abdulla al-Suwaidi dreamed of reviving a long-lost part of Middle Eastern culture when he seeded his first oyster with a tiny bead and placed it in the warm waters of the Gulf in 2004.
Almost a decade later, the cofounder and vice-chairman of RAK Pearls is finally seeing the fruits of his labor with the first auction of cultured pearls from RAK’s oyster farm off the coast of Ras al-Khaimah, one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates.
“We’re seeing today a revival of a culture, a treasure that’s been lost to us for many, many years,” al-Suwaidi said in an interview.
Photo: Reuters
Natural pearl diving was once the main income of many families in the region, but it vanished after World War I with the development of vast oil reserves in the Gulf and the rise of competition from Japanese cultured pearls.
RAK Pearls, the region’s only cultured pearl producer, now has about 40,000 oysters bedded down in the Gulf’s briny waters and in June, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre Authority (DMCC) held an exclusive auction for some of its produce.
“Dubai has been a trading center of pearls for many years, but this is the first time that we auction locally cultivated pearls with a quality that surpasses anything that you’ve seen farmed in countries like China and Japan,” DMCC executive vice chairman Ahmed bin Sulayem said.
Photo: Reuters
The value of traded natural and cultured pearls through nearby Dubai grew by an average 25 percent annually between 2003 and 2011 to hit US$30 million a year in the past few years, while volumes have risen 10 percent annually, DMCC director of commodity services Franco Bosoni said.
Prices per pearl could hit as much as 1 million UAE dirhams (US$272,300), RAK’s Japanese board director Daiji Imura said. Smaller pearls could sell for as little as 1 dirham.
Historically, natural pearls were symbols of style and an important indicator of wealth and status in the Middle East.
Until the decline of the natural pearl market, local fishermen throughout the Gulf used to dive deep into the waterway’s warm waters, hunting for the pearls which provided a main source of income for many people.
The Gulf has produced fine jewelry for thousands of years, and the best natural pearls appeared in the jewelry of kings and queens.
RAK Pearls intends to grows its production of 40,000 oysters to about 200,000 in a few years, but considers it more than just a business.
“Pearls are mentioned in our poems, books and even the names of our daughters,” al-Suwaidi said.
His firm has adopted the Japanese pearl farming technology of inserting tiny beads made from mother of pearl into oysters along with a small piece of the mantle organ from a donor oyster.
The mollusk then naturally coats the bead with layers of a substance called nacre — the same hard, iridescent material that lines its inner shell and is known as mother of pearl.
The oyster is then placed back in the water and over several months, the buildup of nacre layers eventually creates what is known as a cultured pearl.
Holding tweezers and a small sharp blade, RAK’s pearl-seeding expert Lutfi Hasayed treats the oysters with the loving care of a doctor and the sharp eye of an artist.
“Success at our farm is 80 percent,” Hasayed said from his air-conditioned workspace near the turquoise waters.
That is just as well, as the project is partly owned by the government of Ras al-Khaimah and expected to become part of the tourist trail as well as contribute to the food industry.
Waste from the shells is used as fertilizer and the oyster meat is served at the company’s Japanese restaurant chain in the emirate.
“This is a pilot project and we’re receiving interest from investors across the region to duplicate it in other countries,” RAK marketing manager Mohammed al-Suwaidi said.
“We plan to bring the pearling industry of the Gulf back to its golden days,” he said.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is