Jewellery Demand Surges Across the UAE

**Tim Elliott** (0:00)
This is the Morning Drive. In the global luxury landscape, made in Italy is a phrase that carries weight. And Italy is doubling down on the UAE's booming luxury market. Italian jewelry exports to the UAE surged by over 12%. 1.3 billion euros in 2025
Let that sink in. So ahead of the 57th watches and jewelry Middle East show, as in Shazia this week, we're now joined by Valerio Soldani, who is the Trade Commissioner of the Italian Trade Agency to the UAE. He's the Director of the ITA Office, the Italian Trade Agency Office in Dubai. We're going to look at why Italian jewelry brands are seeing such strong growth across the GCC, the lasting appeal of made-in-Italy craftsmanship, and why the UAE remains a key gateway for regional expansion. And probably more as well, it's good to have you back, Valerio. Nice to see you.

**Valerio Soldani** (0:58)
Thank you for having me. Nice to see you, Tim.

**Tim Elliott** (1:00)
You're very welcome. When we look at the 2025 export figure of 1.3 billion euros, it's clear the UAE isn't just like a market for Italy, it's a partner. It's an important market, obviously, for Italian jewelry brands.
What's driving that kind of growth, double-digit growth for gold and gemstones and luxury jewelry at the moment?

**Valerio Soldani** (1:26)
Well, I would say that 2025 has been a record here, because 1.3 billion euros of exports, it's only jewelry, which is the first category in Italian exports. But we achieved to pass the mark of 9.5 billion euros of overall exports to the UAE.
And I would say that more than one-third of that, it's really related to the Italian lifestyle. So the made in Italy that pops to your mind when you think about Italian style, Italian lifestyle. And it comes with fashion, jewelry, and all the accessories that we are selling to this market. And I think that jewelry drives that kind of record high number, because we have a very good reception from the local customer base, because they really have a taste and let's say a behavior as a customer base that really resonates with the galaxy of small and medium companies that makes this export possible. So you have a galaxy of small and medium enterprises, of workshop that are concentrated in Italian industrial clusters, in Naples, in Valencia, in Florence, in many other hotspots of the Italian jewelry industry. And they are pitching their products and their solutions person to person. So we have the founders coming for shows, we have them handling personally, sometimes the private sales.
And that really makes this kind of luxury, this kind of lifestyle expressed in jewelry as a piece of art that can come at your doorstep and you can establish a dialogue with. So this is not a major luxury brand dropping something, but this is made of smaller medium companies that are delivering the new product right to this market. And I think that it works.

**Tim Elliott** (3:30)
It has a touch to it, a different kind of a touch to it, doesn't it, I suppose? What is it about made in Italy craftsmanship that stands out globally so much, do you think?

**Valerio Soldani** (3:42)
I think when it comes to these multi-generational workshops, for example, in Sharjah in two days, we have 34 companies that are coming here. It's a selection. So if you come over there, you speak to the founders, and they've been carrying on this business since generations. So maybe their grandfathers and their parents, they started something 100 years ago.
So it's really related to the way of making things and that kind of know-how that really goes across generations. So they merge the tradition that they have from their family and their family workshop and brand to the ability to sell the biggest part of these products to foreign markets. So they establish a dialogue in some products that are really resonating with the Italian tradition like Renaissance, like Italian culture, the Italian architecture, but still listening to the local market because they are small companies and they're flexible enough to design a product that merges to cultures and really encounters both the taste of the European home country and the local destination market.

**Tim Elliott** (5:00)
Do you think that our Gulf consumers, I mean, clearly the UAE, the Gulf is a very important market to Italy, increasingly so. But do Gulf consumers shop differently to European buyers, for example?

**Valerio Soldani** (5:16)
I would say, yeah, because they have, let's say, they pay attention to some details way more than, for example, the Italian customer base, for they want something that stands out, that resonates also with the local culture without losing the original identity. And what I've seen personally since the Sharjah show is a B2C one, I think it's the only show we do of 50 shows a year that is B2C. So you have the direct relationships between the jewelry houses and the final customers. So you have a dialogue going on. There is a wedding culture, there is a gifting culture related to Ramadan and the big also, occasions for all the melting pot of cultures that are here in the UAE.