The jewellery exhibition is held at the Kobe International Exhibition Hall with three floors. In terms of the number of displayers, this year's 16th event is 13 percent bigger than last year, according to Reed Exhibitions Japan Ltd., the organizer.

In the halls, close to 100 international manufacturing companies or boutiques, many come from Italy, India and China, and local Japanese suppliers of jewellery and gemstones take the opportunities to show hundreds of collections plus new products to boost their sales.

In the Kobe event, pearl and its related products remain central sectors since the city has long been a well-established distribution center in the world for quality pearls.

Meanwhile, displayers have stepped up their visitor promotion efforts, with the aim to increase the number of buyers called " premium buyers", who are expected to order a certain amount of products or collections at once, from around the world.

"Since the event in Kobe has to compete with similar jewellery exhibitions in other Asian cities, such as Hong Kong or Seoul, we offer, for example, free hotel accommodation to important visitors on a selective basis depending on their purchasing budget."

"We try to add more varied 'extra' service contents of the Kobe exhibition year by year to host big buyers," Sejin Kim, spokesperson of the organizer said.

The organizer expects that more than 14,000 professional buyers will visit the fair which will last until this Friday.