JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Coloured gemstone mining and marketing company Gemfields has achieved record revenues at a five-day ruby auction in Singapore, where the company raked in $43.3-million from the sale of rubies mined in Southern Africa.

This latest value-focused auction generated $9.8-million more than the company’s maiden volume-focused auction in June, which pulled in $33.5-million.

The two auctions together have brought in $76.8-million from rubies found at Montepuez in Mozambique’s north-east Cabo Delgado province.

“This is a great result for the company,” said Investec Securities in a note.

In the latest auction, the London Aim-listed company – headed by South African-born top brass Ian Harebottle and Sean Gilbertson – received $689/ct for the 62 936 ct sold, which represented 74% of the 85 491 ct on offer.

This contrasts sharply with the average sales value at the June auction of $18.43/ct.

Fifty companies from Austria, China, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the UK and the US bid on 35 lots of untreated rubies and some of the proceeds from the much-publicised rare 40.23 ct ruby – christened Rhino Ruby because of its magnitude and mass – has been pledged to fight rhino poaching.

Investec said it would be “exceptionally exciting” if Gemfields were able to achieve with rubies what it had achieved with emeralds.

Gemfields is part of the Pallinghurst group, whose chairperson Brian Gilbertson told Mining Weekly Online in April that Gemfields is striving to do for emeralds what De Beers has done for diamonds, and then repeat the performance for rubies.

Until the 1940s, the sales of coloured gemstones and diamonds were neck and neck, but then coloured stones fell back on erratic supply, and diamonds surged forward on consistent supply.

Now consistency of coloured-gemstone supply is back and demand is rising.

Gemfields has been implementing ‘the art of colour’ strategy through Fabergé, which earlier this year held jewellery displays in London and New York.

At the latest Oscars, superstar models walked in wearing emeralds from the Gemfields emerald mine in Zambia.

“The publicity has been enormous,” Gilbertson told Mining Weekly Online in a video interview at the time.

Now Gemfields is going all out to hit the same high notes with Mozambican rubies.

Gemfields Kagem emerald mine in Zambia currently produces between 20% and 25% of the world’s emeralds and the industry’s pricing process has been transformed through a system of transparent auctions.