GEMFIELDS GROUP SELLS 93% OF LOTS ON OFFER AT EMERALD AUCTION OF ROUGH EMERALDS

GEMFIELDS Group said 43 lots were offered for sale at an auction of commercial quality rough emeralds from March 5 to 22, of which 40 lots were sold. Auction revenues were $17.1 million (R324.5m). The average price was $4.45 per carat. Forty-seven auctions of Kagem gemstones since July, 2009, had generated $1.01 billion. The mix and quality of lots offered at each auction vary in characteristics such as size, colour and clarity on account of variations in mined production and market demand.

Thus results of each auction were not always comparable. Gemfields’s managing director of product and sales, Adrian Banks, said in a statement: “We are pleased to conclude another successful Kagem auction, demonstrating that the commercialquality emerald market remains in good shape and prices achieved are broadly in line with the September, 2023 commercialquality auction.” He said the latest offering had included large quantities of lowerquality emeralds, which would normally be sold to smaller manufacturers in Jaipur via the company’s direct sales channel. These parcels accounted for 55% of the auction by weight, resulting in the lower overall dollar-per-carat figure realised at this auction. The three unsold lots were also not typical auction grades, being one large cluster of low-quality crystals and two lots of “fines” comprised of small-size material. The rough emeralds sold were extracted by Kagem (which is 75% owned by Gemfields and 25% by the Industrial Development Corporation of Zambia). |