DEEPENING HUES

Fura is a daring and well-founded new entrant to the global mining industry. Specialised in colour gemstones and moving quickly to corner major sources of the world’s supply of emeralds, rubies and sapphires, Fura is poised to launch its evocative products onto world markets, with a special focus on India, this year. Soma Bhatta spoke with Fura’s president and CEO Dev Shetty.

- Soma Bhatta

Soma Bhatta (SB): Please tell us about Fura’s journey so far.

Dev Shetty (DS): Fura’s journey began in January 2017. From the outset, we wanted to focus on colour gemstones. Our focus was on finding operating assets that could bring in revenue within two or three years. Our first acquisition was in Colombian emeralds at Coscuez in January 2018.

Two years on, we have achieved three major milestones. We have a presence in emeralds in Colombia, the world’s largest supplier of emeralds by dollar value. We consolidated licences to build a 435 sq km land block in Mozambique, the world’s largest supplier of rubies. We acquired an operating asset in sapphires in Australia. We are the only company to have all the major categories of colour gemstone in our portfolio.

The acquisition that we announced on 11 February 2020 [of major interest in a number of ruby mining licences and concessions in Mozambique, on favourable terms was the outcome of a consolidation that began in July 2018. Fura is the first international company to have 100 per cent of the land bank in a major producing area.

It is possible that we may have a few more acquisitions in rubies and sapphires in 2020, but our focus is on production. Looking at the current scenario and the uncertainty caused by the novel Coronavirus, we will defer our supply to the market. Instead of the first half of 2020, now we will be supplying the market with emeralds from Colombia and rubies from Mozambique in the second half of 2020. If we get our strategy right, in the second half we may be able to supply Australian sapphires as well. I think we will surprise lots of people, in a good way. With sapphires, we will do what Rio Tinto did for brown diamonds a few years ago.

SB: What do you see as Fura’s main markets?