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An uncharacteristically drizzly day in Valenza did not dampen spirits as giant golden scissors snipped down on “Bvlgari”-emblazoned orange ribbons to symbolically open what the company claimed was the “largest single-brand jewellery manufacturing site in the world”.
Manifattura Bvlgari, sited in the north Italian countryside, originally opened in 2017 and took up 19,000 sq m. This latest expansion to 33,000 sq m has made it one of the largest jewellery manufacturing facilities in the world — although Danish brand Pandora’s Chiang Mai facility in Thailand pipped it at 35,000 sq m — with two new buildings added to the structure connected by a suspended external bridge.
Its existence, says Bvlgari deputy chief executive Laura Burdese, has been driven by production needs. “After five years [of operating the original Manifattura], we already realised that it was not big enough to sustain the demand of our jewellery,” she says, in an interview on the eve of the grand opening, noting that Bvlgari started planning this expansion in 2022, at the height of a luxury boom.
The expanded facility will allow for more machinery, and more skilled hands to craft the jewellery. In 2017, the facility employed 650 people; today, that number has risen to 1,100. It has plans to hire even more, with a 2029 target of 1,600 employees, which would make jobs for an additional 500 artisans. That would mean Bvlgari will have quadrupled its production capability between 2017 and 2029.
To help fill these roles — and address the skills gap that many businesses in the jewellery industry also face — part of the building has been dedicated to a scuola, or school. Run in partnership with TADS (Tarì Design School, based near Naples), the scuola will open in September and will be accessible to all aspiring jewellers, not just those destined to work for Bvlgari. It will educate 80 students each year, teaching core skills such as goldsmithing and gem setting. This will run separately to the Bvlgari Academy, an internal training facility opened in 2017.
This investment in European manufacturing comes amid what Bernard Arnault, chief executive of Bvlgari parent group LVMH, has called “an uncertain environment” for the luxury sector.
Burdese says Bvlgari values its Italian heritage and sees “a value to holding on to the tradition and the legacy of this very magical place”. Valenza is renowned as a centre for goldsmiths. This championing of the “Made in Italy” narrative was evident at the Manifattura’s opening ceremony, which was attended by regional and national government ministers.
In spite of the business climate, Bvlgari has grown in recent years. LVMH’s 2024 annual report spoke of the brand achieving “record-breaking revenue in high jewellery and luxury watches”, and its high jewellery launch of that year, Aeterna, was notable for the inclusion of the highest number of “millionaire pieces” with 100 designs priced at €1mn or more.
The flagship Aeterna 140-carat diamond necklace, priced at €40mn, sold on the first day of the presentation to clients. Morgan Stanley estimates Bvlgari’s total sales grew from €2bn in 2020 to €3.47bn in 2024, with 80 per cent of turnover coming from jewellery.
Manifattura Bvlgari will produce some high jewellery, although most of this will be crafted at an existing dedicated atelier in Rome, with plans to extend this facility in the future. The real action in Valenza will be the creation of the brand’s more commercial lines, such as its evergreen Serpenti and B.zero1 collections.
In a large room at the factory, humming with the sound of heavy machinery, a workshop manager explains the site has the capacity to make 6mn components a year. In front of him lies a Serpenti necklace and bracelet broken down into individual gold scales and serpentine heads to illustrate the type of parts he is referring to.
Amid the tough economic environment, tariffs threatened by the US could have a huge impact not just on Bvlgari, but the entire Italian jewellery industry. The Vicenzaoro jewellery trade show stated in a press release in January that “Italy is the United States’ second largest trading partner after India, with a 14 per cent share of American gold jewellery imports in 2023”, but noted that exports of Italian-made gold jewellery to the US dropped 8.1 per cent in the first nine months of 2024 as US presidential election campaigning intensified.
With a lightning-quick wave of the hands, Burdese says she won’t be drawn on this subject. What she will say is that the investment Bvlgari is making in the Manifattura is for the long term. “We have seen a very positive growth in the last years, and that’s the reason why we are opening this Manifattura,” she says.
“Of course, the last couple of months have been very uncertain as for everyone, but we [are] cautiously optimistic. We have the luck to work for an industry which is more resilient by definition, because it’s timeless — the pieces hold the value. It’s exactly what people are looking for, especially in the moment of difficulties and uncertainties.”
Burdese says that while Bvlgari might not need the new facility’s full manufacturing capability on tap right now, she sees a future when it will. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” she says. “We have built Valenza not to double our production from one day to the other . . . we are going to do it step by step and progressively over the next three, four, five years.”
