UK Ethical Jeweller of the Year

Fairtrade Gold

A huge proportion of miners are Artisanal Small-scale Miners (ASM) whose communities rely on their industry

They often work in hard-to-access, remote locations where their long days are filled with backbreaking and dangerous work in mines. This means they can’t get to market to sell their gold at a fair price and struggle to make the money they should. Consequently, they don’t have the money to invest in safety equipment or training to improve their situation.

The Fairtrade Foundation decided it was time to rectify this and spent years working with the Alliance for Responsible Mining to set standards that would ensure people are paid fairly and can work safely. By working in cooperatives, miners achieve Fairtrade certification which gives the security of a fair and fixed price for their gold. As well as that they receive additional benefits for their community. Fairtrade pays the miners 95% of the global fixed price for their gold, and then an additional Fairtrade Premium ($2000 US/kilo) which goes to the community, who choose what it’s spent on. It could fund anything from schools to get children out of mining and into education, to improving water sources.

Harriet was approached by Fairtrade and asked to help define the process of linking smaller jewellers with Fairtrade gold. She explained in great detail how we work, so that they could get that connection right. Not long afterwards, we were honoured to be one of the first 20 jewellers worldwide to launch Fairtrade gold.

Fairtrade jewellery receives the official stamp from the Assay Office. Only the companies licensed to work with certified Fairtrade metal are allowed to use this stamp. We’re audited every year to ensure our part in the supply chain is correctly administered and to proudly offer Fairtrade metal.

Choosing Fairtrade gold

As a bespoke customer we give you Certified Fairtrade options for your metal wherever possible. Depending on your design choices, there may not be a vast difference in cost between having your jewellery made in Fairtrade or standard metal. Just think, for a modest extra charge, your jewellery can include Fairtrade metal sourced from artisanal miners.

Then through the Fairtrade chain of custody, the miners will receive the premium for their metal and decide how to invest it in their communities. We do not profit from the use of Fairtrade metal, but by choosing Fairtrade your purchase is helping transform the world.

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Where does Fairtrade gold come from?

The gold we work with comes from the MACDESA cooperative in Peru. The miners are required to abide by national environmental legislation, preserve the environmental balance in their environment, minimise water use and the use of toxic chemicals and help preserve ecosystems, particularly those that form the environment of indigenous people.

They work extremely hard to achieve certification and we are very proud to be working with such amazing people.

Fairtrade Jewellery

"We are proud to have played our part in launching Fairtrade gold and helping it become established in the UK jewellery industry"

Harriet Kelsall

“We are proud to have played our part in launching Fairtrade gold and helping it become established in the UK jewellery industry. Responsibly sourced gold has been something we have always offered our customers, but the Fairtrade “rubber-stamp” makes sure that the paper-trail goes back to the artisanal miners for every piece of jewellery created. Globally, there are over 100 million people who depend directly or indirectly on artisanal and small-scale mining and who are trapped in unfair supply chains, struggling to get a fair price for the gold they mine. Certified Fairtrade gold means we are changing this and improve economic, social and environmental conditions for miners.

As one of only 20 companies in the world to have been chosen to launch Fairtrade gold, we are committed to educating people about the difference they can make by choosing Fairtrade gold over ‘standard’ gold and hope one day to have so much demand that we can convert all our gold over to Fairtrade.

Our message is simple. For the price of a meal out, you can have a Fairtrade gold ring instead of one made with standard gold. You’ll be happy in the knowledge that the people who mined the very same gold on your finger were paid fairly. When we’re talking about the important life-moments, such as a ring as a symbol of engagement or to mark the birth of a child, this seems especially worthwhile.”