Sun Minerals Madagascar, a potential 20-year joint venture (JV) between mining and exploration company Norcross Madagascar Group (NMG) and quarry extracting company SRE India, planned to start opening a second quarry at the Peacock Blue labradorite project under the JV in May, in the hope that the new area would produce a new colour.

Sun Minerals Madagascar announced in April that, along with NMG, it would be the exclusive supplier of blocks and slabs from the labradorite (or blue granite) quarry in the village of Maniry, in Bokonaky, Madagascar.

In January, NMG announced plans to develop the open side of its labradorite quarry and start factory construction this year, with production having been slated to start in March. The Maniry material has a dominant peacock blue colour and a famous rainbow or multicolour flash.

NMG owns and operates the Peacock Blue labradorite claim with two separate JVs.

Labradorite granite block mining has been taking place in Madagascar for the last 12 years in about ten quarries with the same labradorite outcrop in two hot spot regions. In the beginning, the low-grade material with little flash, was significantly better than the labradorite blocks mined outside Madagascar. As of January 2015, only two traditional gemstone quarries produced material with a significant crystal flash. Working the other areas, says NMG, is a big risk since the market pays for the flash.

Last year, NMG reported that the Peacock Blue labradorite mine continued to yield a large amount of gem material as a by-product of the quarrying operations. The large blocks are cut out and shipped off to China where they are cut into high-end slabs greatly prized in the counter-top industry.

The gem labradorite is removed from the waste blocks from the quarry by hand-breaking. NMG says, the accumulated waste will enable years of gem extraction used for carvings, jewellery cabochon, sinks and gemstone composite slabs. NMG highlighted in July 2015 that social activities were continuing as the area was generating good profits, while Madagascar Minerals was funding a number of social projects in the local community, including a new school.

NMG boasts that the labradorite mine expanded at its fastest pace in 2014. Owing to block mining entering its fourth season, the deposit produced its best quality to date in January 2015. NMG notes that there have been many challenges that have prevented the natural supply and demand model from developing, explaining that, from 2009 to 2014, there was a revolution, and the new Madagascar government allowed the local governments to manage their tax collection.

This permitted the local mayor at the labradorite quarry to demand a 300% increase in taxes in 2015. The quarry was shut down for three months and, in the end, NMG had the original tax model back in place and the mayor became a new partner in assisting in clamping down on theft from the mine.

As at January 2015, the increased production from NMG’s Chinese mining company had left about 2 500 trucks of gemstone labradorite ‘waste’ from the block production. The company adds that, despite reasonable security in place, trucks had managed to sneak in and out during the evenings with the help of locals.

As the quarry develops, the gemstone crystal size has increased, exceeding the famous traditional darker Bekily labradorite. The change was so dramatic in 2014 that NMG discontinued mining the Bekily material, located 60 km to the north in the same labradorite geologic formation.

NMG was famous for the Bekily model and notes that it will continue to offer this material to clients, but at one-third of the price of the Maniry material. The popularity of the Bekily material, in conjunction with the lower price, influenced the increase in demand which NMG was not prepared for. This caused widespread theft by gem and mineral traders, with this product entering the local market in the capital city of Madagascar, Antananarivo.

Further, as the quality in the NMG Maniry quarry has increased each year for the last four years, the Bekily material has forced lower-grade granite labradorite quarries in Canada, Finland, Norway, Ukraine and Russia to close down.

Additionally, the operations of the competing quarry in Bekily moved to a nongemstone area in 2015, making the NMG quarry in Maniry the only quarry currently producing gemstones. Previously, there were eight block operators, compared with last year, when there were only two that were profitable.