Fura Gems, a startup precious colour gemstone mining company launched in 2017, is uniquely positioned as the first and only mining company in the world to explore three colour gemstone categories including emeralds, rubies and sapphires.
While achieving this remarkable feat, Dev Shetty, Founder & CEO, set another extraordinary and unprecedented record for the fastest turnaround of mines from exploration to production. In 2021, Fura gems will produce 5.5 million carats of Australian sapphires, 6 million carats of Mozambican rubies and 300,000 carats of Colombian emeralds. Here are excerpts from a recent interview where he talks about the winning strategies that are leading Fura to the market leadership position.
Q: FURA Gems is a startup mining company. How would you sum up its purpose briefly?
Dev Shetty (DS): FURA Gems is ambitious about the future of the global colour gemstone market. Our purpose is to spread trade transparency by providing ethically sourced colour gemstones with complete traceability of the mine-origin to end-consumers. At that end, we have already acquired the 122-95 M Coscuez emerald mine in Colombia on October 30, 2017, seven ruby mining licenses of various shares in Mozambique by October 2019, and the Great Northern Mining and Capricorn Sapphire mines in Australia by end of 2020. We are the first mining company in the world to explore all three color gemstone categories.
Q: Financing is one of the principle barriers to entry into the mining industry. How did you secure the financing for the startup mine?
DS: It's a capital-intensive industry with a long gestation period. With the history of diamond marketing, investors have strong reference point for diamond mining, not colour gemstone. A startup such as Fura didn't have a reference point of its own. We changed the tactic of partnering with traditional investors and spent two years to find like-minded shareholders who believe in our long-term vision.
Q: You have brought to market the roughs in record time. It is unheard-of in the mining industry. What do you attribute this remarkable feat to?
DS: We take great pride in having established a record for the fastest turnaround of mines from exploration to production. Primarily, it can be attributed to our approach to acquiring new mines. We have been extremely discerning in locating mines with scalable and rare quality resources which are past the initial discovery phase. Having said that, we have invested significantly in high-tech geo mapping to accurately gauge the mine-life. The collective expertise of our top management is enabling us to build processes and systems that help optimize the production capacities on site. The combined outcome is enabling us to steadily scale up production even as we keep the costs efficient.
Q: What are the plans to bring the rough produce to the market?
DS: We held our first emerald auction in The UAE and Colombia in March 2021. We are holding our inaugural ruby auction in months' time in August 2021. Later in the year, we will hold our very first auction for Australian Sapphires. In 2022, we have plans to produce 10 million carats of Australian sapphires, 8 million carats of Mozambican rubies and 400,000 carats of Colombian emeralds. This achievement is equivalent to decades of operation in other precious gemstone and precious metal space.
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