Thoughts for 2017, page-48

Taking a look at some jewellery stores over the weekend and talking to various sales clerks anecdotal evidence is clear that there has been an uptick in interest in coloured gems. Interestingly though, not many of the lower end stores will give you any information about the ruby that you are buying. I'm talking about jewellery in the 300 - 1200 bracket as they simply don't know anything about the grade, treatment or fillings. Next to these were some Natural but lower grade rubies that commanded a significant premium as they were untreated. As far as the market goes from my snooping around in Australian jewellery stores there is no shortage of run of the mill, treated stones. These arent rare. It's the stones that are untreated, even the lower grade stones that are able to be faceted that command a premium and it's these stones that are not easy to find.

In saying this, I believe given that our focus is on higher grade secondary deposits we won't necessarily be flooding the market as there is not a saturation of Premium stones, its the treated stone end of town that has the potential of being over supplied. So we may drop a few dollars on our stones that don't make the higher grades, but for the rest, I am fairly confident we will receive robust demand.