Jeweller - September 2023

News
Pearls for bones: Attention builds for
groundbreaking biomedical project
Broome pearl producer Willie Creek Pearls and the University of Western
Australia’s Medical School are blazing a trail in the search for a solution to
the global shortage of bone implant materials in the medical industry.
A study led by Professor Minghao Zheng and Dr Rui Ruan confirmed that
nacre from silver-lipped pearl oysters in Broome has a structure that
makes it suitable for bone substitute material.
UWA has developed a patented technology for using nacre to make a
substitute named PearlBone, which has been assigned to a biotech
company called Marine Biomedical.
Willie Creek Pearls has a commercial arrangement with Marine
Biomedical to supply raw materials to the company.
“The magnitude of the opportunity is interesting as the business’
foundation product PearlBone is focusing on revolutionising the product
used for bone voids and trauma medicine,” he told The Australian.
“The staff at Marine Biomedical are focused on the development of their
foundation product at the moment and behind the scenes there is a lot of
research and development going on, which is exciting.”
In an interview with Jeweller last year, Zheng said the PearlBone project
has the potential to change the pearl farming industry in Australia.
“It’s completely reshaping the purposes of farming and what can be
achieved with the product. If the project is successful it may lead to an
increase in demand which in turn leads to more farms," he said.
"That leads to a bigger industry with more and more people being hired
from local communities, boosting local communities, which is great.”
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Broome remains the centre of Australia’s South Sea pearl production. The
price of pearls has continued to increase for the past two years due to the
impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“An advantage we have is that as a vertically integrated business, we have
the opportunity to take the product we are farming and growing all the
way through to the consumer, who are our guests and visitors,” Birch said.
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“Off the back of a couple of extraordinary years in Broome, things have
returned to the way they were pre-pandemic and our view is that if
we continue to strive to deliver quality experiences and products, we
will continue to experience increases that are real, sustainable, and
manageable.”
In recent years, Australian pearls and pearl jewellery has been in
particularly high demand in Asian markets.
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