A new report from coloured gemstones miner Gemfields on the emerald, ruby and sapphire markets “… serves as a reminder of how far the coloured gemstone industry still has to go to reach the levels of transparency that end-consumers deserve”, Gemfields CEO Sean Gilbertson said on February 4.

The newly launched report, titled ‘Understanding the Global Supply of Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire’, was funded by Gemfields and authored by GeoGems CEO Lauriane Pinsault. It includes input from about 100 industry experts and companies who were invited to contribute.

The report builds on Gemfields’ 2022 report titled ‘Global Emerald & Ruby Supply: Analysing Market Data’, also authored by Pinsault, but goes a step further in understanding the supply of coloured gemstones.

The first report used several sources of data, notably UN Comtrade and the US Geological Survey (USGS), and compared these with miners’ direct information, where it was made available. The 2022 research indicated that online data related to coloured gemstone supply was unreliable and often missing, and that values were often underdeclared.

The new research had three objectives. Firstly, to update data from the previous report; secondly, to add market analysis of sapphire; and thirdly, to incorporate new sources of information, working in collaboration with other miners, associations, cooperatives and consultants, to provide more robust analysis and understanding of global supply of emerald, ruby and sapphire.

While the new report incorporates a greater number of collaborators than the initial one did, and therefore presents a more informed analysis of the industry, the data regarding the industry is still inconsistent, often incomparable and far from robust, Gemfields noted.

“This second deep-dive into the global supply of emerald, ruby and sapphire makes solid strides forward. Gemfields has pioneered approaches such as this research paper series and the G-Factor for Natural Resources, to facilitate a clearer understanding of the coloured gemstone sector, so that the industry can increasingly serve as a force for good,” Gilbertson explained.

The new report is the result of a long-term endeavour to connect with and contact numerous players within the coloured gemstone industry.

“Their opinions, compiled using data from miners, governments and industry reports, makes this paper one of the most reliable works completed to date in relation to estimating the volumes of production of ruby, emerald and sapphire.

“That said, the highlighted inconsistencies, incoherencies, lack of information and resistance by some within the industry to collaborate – even anonymously – shows that there is still a long way to go before we reach a comparable level of access to information to that which exists in the diamond industry. Such access would surely benefit the entire sector,” Pinsault noted.

Pinsault’s research provides an overview of coloured gemstone supply, its evolution over the past 40 years and its current status as informed by miners, mining associations and consultants, data collection agencies, governmental mineral statistics and USGS and Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) reports, in addition to bibliographic research, notably from industry-specialised publications such as Gems & Gemology, Journal of Gemmology and InColor.

Unlike the 2022 report, the new report also sought to include information about the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector.

Collaboration with associations, consultants and miners of all scales has enabled this research to provide a better estimate of the share of global supply attributable to ASM, and therefore the paper attempts to give an estimate of the undeclared portion of production that arises from this channel.

In pursuit of greater transparency, Gemfields has called for all coloured gemstone producers to publish their ‘G-factor’ for natural resources annually. The G-factor for natural resources is a simple calculation of the percentage of an extractive company’s revenue that is paid to the country-of-origin’s government in the form of mineral royalties, corporation tax and, where applicable, dividends.

In April last year, Zambia became the first country in Africa to publish its G-factor for natural resources data for selected mining companies through its EITI online portal, furthering transparency and accountability in Zambia’s mining sector.