Pandora has inaugurated a $150 million manufacturing facility in Vietnam, its largest plant to date and its first outside Thailand, where the Danish jewelry company has produced for decades across three sites.

The new factory sits in the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park III near Ho Chi Minh City. The 7.5-hectare site took two years to build. Pandora says it is designed to run on 100 percent renewable electricity and incorporates advanced manufacturing technology and digital solutions — claims the company has not yet backed with third-party certification details.

The move gives Pandora a second production geography after more than a decade of Thai-only manufacturing. Pandora's most recent Thai site opened in 2018.

Why Vietnam

President and CEO Berta de Pablos-Barbier called the investment "building the capacity today for the Pandora of tomorrow" and framed it as confidence in upcoming growth. She told WWD ahead of Thursday's opening that Vietnam offered "the best of both worlds": economic stability, solid infrastructure and "a rich tradition of jewelry crafting" on par with Thailand, with a deep pool of potential craftspeople in the country's south.

Staffing and training pipeline

Recruitment has focused on the surrounding region. Pandora relocated 25 experienced craftspeople from Thailand to train new hires. Its on-site Crafting Academy covers five areas and 35 skills; training a worker to multiskilled-crafter level can take up to six months.

Staffing stands at 700 craftspeople on opening day. Pandora expects to reach 1,000 by year-end and eventually 7,000 — a tenfold increase that will test local labor availability and retention.

Capacity: built headroom, not Day One volume

At full capacity, the site could produce up to 60 million pieces of jewelry annually. The CEO cautioned Pandora is "not building for that capacity on Day One." For scale, Pandora produced more than 112 million jewelry pieces in 2025, according to its annual report — meaning the Vietnam plant alone could eventually add more than half again to current group output.

Vietnam will initially focus on gold-plated jewelry. The first piece off the line was a personalizable dangle heart charm, presented to the 700 craftspeople on site as a memento. Platinum-plated items could follow at the site in time, though Pandora is starting production with that new material in Thailand for now.

Growth context

The opening comes as Pandora charts a path back to growth. The company raised its guidance in August after improved second-quarter results.

De Pablos-Barbier is also rebuilding brand desirability, arguing that craft visibility is part of that commercial strategy. "It's very important that behind every Pandora product there is a human, whether it's a designer, whether it's a crafter," she said. "I want to really step up the desirability of Pandora — being part of culture is critical and you cannot be part of culture being an anonymous brand."

Recent brand moves include a tie-up with makeup artist Dame Pat McGrath launching in October and the Wonders platform introduced in July with stylist Harry Lambert. A second act for Wonders is planned for next summer.

For sourcing and supply-chain watchers, the Vietnam plant signals a deliberate diversification of finished-goods capacity into a lower-cost, stable manufacturing base with a trainable labor pool — and a hedge against single-country concentration in jewelry production.

Pandora has scheduled a strategic update for November, where it will also announce its next Capital Markets Day, slated for 2027.