Pandora opens its Vietnam factory: what is measured and what is a target

Pandora opened its new Vietnam factory on October 1, 2026, and the numbers on the press release are big: a USD 150 million investment, up to 60 million pieces of jewelry a year, 7,000 jobs once fully staffed, and a claim to be the world's largest crafting facility for fine jewelry. The more useful question for anyone following the business is what a Pandora Vietnam factory changes, and which of its claims are measured rather than promised.

What Pandora says it opened

According to Pandora's own press release, the facility sits on a 7.5-hectare site in Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park III, near Ho Chi Minh City. It is the company's fourth crafting facility and the first outside Thailand, where Pandora has made jewelry for 37 years. The company says the plant will add 50 percent to its manufacturing capacity, run only on renewable electricity, use 100 percent recycled silver and gold, and carry LEED Gold certification, a green building rating.

CEO Berta de Pablos-Barbier framed it as growth insurance: "This investment gives us the capacity, flexibility and innovation to support our future growth."

The capacity math

Sixty million pieces a year is the ceiling, not the opening-day output. InStore reported that the plant will start at around 15 percent of Pandora's global capacity and grow to a third by 2030, and that it opens with 700 craftspeople, expects 1,000 by the end of 2026 and only reaches 7,000 later. Pandora brought 25 experienced trainers from Thailand, and InStore reports that training a new worker can take up to six months. Production will begin with gold-plated jewelry.

So the 7,000 jobs and the 50 percent capacity figure describe a finished factory some years away. A reader who sees "7,000 jobs" in a headline today is reading a target. That is not a criticism of Pandora, but it is the line between what shipped and what showed.

Why Vietnam, and why now

Pandora's release says the move strengthens supply chain resilience. The CEO was blunter on trade, telling InStore: "We're building this facility for the next decade, not the next quarter." The United States is Pandora's largest market, so tariff exposure on goods made in Thailand or Vietnam is never far from the conversation, and a second country of origin gives the company a way to shift volume if rates change.

The company is not building from weakness. FinChannel's report on the opening lists Pandora's second quarter 2026 revenue at 7.219 billion Danish kroner, up from 7.075 billion a year earlier, with organic growth of 3 percent and operating profit of 1.463 billion kroner against 1.287 billion. Those are secondary-source numbers; the filing is the place to confirm them before quoting them in anything that matters.

The recycled metal claim, graded

Pandora switched to 100 percent recycled gold and silver in August 2024, according to the Associated Press report carried by ABC News. The same report is clear about the difficulty. The company buys refined metal from European and Asian recyclers, recovering it from items such as medical equipment and old cutlery, and it needs rigorous auditing to keep newly mined metal out of the chain.

That is the honest shape of a recycled claim: it is only as good as the audit behind it. The press release states the 100 percent figure as a fact. The AP report shows the work required to keep it true. Pandora's CEO told the AP: "We are leading the way and we really hope that the rest follow."

The renewable power claim, graded

The factory runs on renewable electricity from rooftop solar panels and from local solar farms, according to the AP. The AP also notes context the press release leaves out: Vietnam had the largest installed solar and wind capacity in Southeast Asia by the end of 2024, but the country still relies heavily on coal. A plant that buys renewable supply on a coal-heavy grid is making a procurement claim, and the structure of that contract (direct supply, certificates, or a mix) decides how much weight the word "entirely" can bear.

The figure that Pandora and the AP both attach to the footprint is a 17 percent cut in the company's carbon footprint. The reports we opened do not show the baseline or the method, so treat the number as a company claim until Pandora publishes the calculation.

Gold prices make this a cost story too

FinChannel places the opening against a jewelry market where gold-jewelry spending rose 18 percent in 2025 to USD 172 billion while the volume of gold used fell, as shoppers bought lighter pieces. Pandora's plan to start with gold-plated jewelry fits that pattern: a thin layer of gold over a base metal keeps the sticker price lower when the metal is expensive. A bigger, more flexible factory is as much a cost-control tool as a growth bet.

Our take

The factory is real, the date is real, and the investment is a serious commitment to a second manufacturing country. Skip the headline "world's largest" as a measurement; it is Pandora's own description, and the comparison set is not published. Watch three things instead: how quickly the plant climbs from 700 workers toward the 7,000 target, whether Pandora publishes the method behind its 17 percent footprint cut, and how the company describes the power contract. If those arrive with numbers, the sustainability story gets stronger. If they do not, the factory is still a smart supply chain move, just not a green one.