Modern Mining April 2022

“The outlook for coloured gemstones is extremely positive, as evidenced by jewellery manufacturers and consumers replacing coloured glass products and jewellery with emeralds, rubies and sapphires.” Owing to the constrained and unreliable supply of gemstones over the years jewellery manufacturers replicated coloured gemstones with coloured glass (red, green, blue, and others). But now, with more consistent coloured gemstone supply available, con sumers are returning to gemstones. Further to this, jewellery manufacturers are increasingly adding splashes of colour to diamond jewellery with the inclusion of coloured gemstones, thereby offering greater certainty for long-term sus tainability of both diamonds and gemstones, Shetty says. Ensuring a strong project pipeline Fura Gems owns and operates the Coscuez mine, historically regarded as one of the world’s most sig nificant emerald mines, having been in operation for over 400 years and having produced some of Colombia’s finest emeralds. The company recently increased the footprint of its small-scale mining licence to a large-scale 30-year mining licence, allowing the miner to develop a large-scale underground mine. Fura is in the process of developing a new decline and tunnel entrance at the underground Coscuez mine and is constructing a new washing plant and establishing a new waste dump. This will see the mine ramp up production from 500 000 cts rough emeralds in 2022 to 2 mcts by the end of 2023. The mine currently employs 450 people but this figure will increase as Fura starts construction of

the underground decline later this year. In addition, Fura Gems acquired three mining licences in the Montepuez District of Cabo Delgado province in Mozambique in 2018 – this in a bid to progress its strategy of becoming a renowned ruby producer. It has since consolidated its ruby licences and built two processing plants with capacity to mine some 30 mcts of rubies per annum. “The past 18 months have been extremely busy for Fura Gems as we ramped up production at our

Fura Gems mines rubies in Mozambique.

Mozambique assets. Fol lowing construction of the first pilot plant in September 2020, we have sub sequently upgraded the pilot plant and constructed a new, larger wash plant at the end of February 2022. Fura Gems now has capacity to wash 1,8 mtpa of ore, from which we expect to generate over 30 mcts of rubies,” says Shetty. Fura Gems’ Mozambique opera tions employ around 400 people. In line with completing its strategy

By end of 2022, Fura will officially be the world’s largest supplier of rough rubies and sapphires and, by the end of 2023, it will be the largest supplier of Colombian emeralds- Shetty.

of mining the trio of the top three coloured gem stones, Fura has replicated its Mozambique ruby success at its Australian sapphire project located in Central Queensland, and is now on track to produce some 10 mcts per annum of sapphires. “By end of 2022, Fura will officially be the world’s largest supplier of rough rubies and sapphires and, by the end of 2023, we will be the largest supplier of Colombian emeralds, cementing our vision of becoming a leading supplier of rubies, emeralds and sapphires,” says Shetty.

April 2022  MODERN MINING  35