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Professor P. G. R. Dharmaratne,
Chairman, National Gem and Jewellery Authority.

Geuda is a variety of gemstones in the corundum species of minerals. Corundum which possess a deep red variety known as ruby and many other colours such as blue, pink, yellow, orange, green, reddish orange (known as Pathmaraga) is referred to as sapphire with a prefix for colour. It is only second in hardness to that of diamond but it certainly surpasses diamond in beauty, abundance and appeal due to its spectral colours. Other lesser-known varieties of corundum are star sapphire, star ruby, 'Geuda' and 'Ottu'. Geuda and Ottu varieties constitute about 30 - 40% and 5 - 10% respectively of the total corundum stones found in Sri Lanka.

Geuda are not attractive enough to be cut and polished and set in jewellery, as they translucent-yellowish or in the colour of diesel in transmitted light (looking through the stone) and milky or silky (reflective) in reflected light (appearance when stone is placed on the palm) with the basic body colour being light blue, red or yellow. The Ottu on the other hand is colourless corundum with a patch, a dot or a streak of blue.

While Ottu always produce transparent blue coloured sapphires Geuda may turn in to transparent blue, red, yellow or orange depending on their body colour on heating to around 1,700 degrees Centigrade. What in effect is happening in Geuda on heating is that sub-microscopic scale rutile (Tlo2) needles that causes translucency, dissolve into the basic corundum (Al2O3) composition creating an appearance similar to that of naturally occurring sapphire. We can say that man takes over where the nature has stopped and is doing it in a day or two as against millions of years, it would have taken for the same to happen naturally.

Now one will wonder what is the difference between natural blue sapphire and those produced by heating Geuda? There is no difference to a layman or even a less experienced gemmologist. All the attributes of gems such as beauty, rarity and hardness of natural blue and heated blue are the same. The properties such as refractive index, lustre and specific gravity are the same.

The heading of corundum stones was known for over centuries and this was done to enhance the beauty of the stone. Violetish corundum was heated in a charcoal furnace with a blowpipe to remove the violet tint and turned them into rubies in gem dealers homes centuries ago. Yet no damage or adverse effects on properties have been known of heated sapphire and ruby even after many years of use. Only difference is seen through the microscope of modified natural inclusions, which really do not give any difference to the appearance when viewed with the naked eye.

So what is the big deal? Why should one buy a natural untreated blue and not somewhat cheaper heat-treated blue sapphire? Well, that is entirely up to the wearer, but people always like to own a brand new, untouched thing as against a tampered one, be it a car, a girl to marry or in this case a gem!! So, the naturalness has an edge over others. Yet the quantities of Geuda/Ottu are so large, that they cannot be ignored so the jewellers sometimes prefer less priced heated sapphires to those produced entirely by natural evolutionary processes.

History

I remember as a child the Geuda stones were just lying around in our homes because nobody regarded it as a gem of value, although our ancestors knew it as a member of Ruby, Sapphire family of corundum. How come? Well, they identified gemstones then and even now by the feel of weight (specific gravity) among other properties, such a colour and vakkuva (pleochroism). Around late 1970s, Thai nationals on tourists visas were going around Ratnapura purchasing Geuda, and the gem miners dug into their collection of less valuable stones that every miner keeps on accumulating, and brought out Geuda and sold them to Thais. With time, the message went across, miners from all mining areas started bringing Geuda stones to Batugedara in Ratnaprua, number of Thais increased rapidly along with the price of Geuda. This in turn increased mining as something they discarded in the past had become valuable. A new community of house renters, drivers, food suppliers sprang up to serve Thais who grew into hundreds.

Geuda agreement

In 1987, Sri Lanka and the Kingdom of Thailand signed an agreement giving exclusive right for Thais to visit Sri Lanka on special passports and insisted that they should remit minimum of US $ 10,000 to visit Sri Lanka to purchase Geuda. A commission of 5% was to be paid to the National Gem and Jewellery Authority to effect the export of Geuda, thus, the Government allowed the export of Geuda in rough form when otherwise every gem needed to be cut and polished locally for the maximum value addition before exporting. When the service charge was 0.5% for cut and polished stones, 5% was levied on rough Geuda to account for the loss of value addition.During this period, while selling Geuda to Thais, the locals were wondering why there was this heavy demand for the unattractive, worthless gemstones. Little by little they got to know that these stones are being heat treated in Thailand to convert them in to transparent quality gems.

Trial and error by local traders led them to finding that these changes were permanent and depended on a process of heating and it finally led to the design and fabrication of a gas operated furnace (named Lakmini furnace) by the Ceylon Refractory Ltd., Meepe at the request of traders. Many furnaces were sold and they were in great demand by the locals.

While heat treatment was becoming popular among locals, Ceylon Gems Ltd. was set up with the government as the main shareholder with leading gem dealers as partners exclusively for the trade in Geuda and heat treatment. This company did a lot of research and trading for many years but it proved once again that gem business cannot be successful with salaried employees who are not held responsible or losses caused due to high purchasing prices and risk involved heat treatment, outcome of which is not always guaranteed. In the end, in 1993 the company wounded-up its activities. But heat treatment has by this time had become popular among locals and at present there are over fifty traders doing the same quite successfully.

In 1990 the agreement which gave the Thais the exclusive right to purchase and export Geuda was annulled so that any foreigner can now purchase Geuda on the same terms and conditions. With heat treatment becoming popular, local traders are competing well with the Thais for purchasing which has resulted in Geuda being priced more than half that of a good blue sapphire of equivalent weight.

Not bad for a stone, which was at one time a worthless pebble kids used to play with! This has also resulted in the reduction of Thais visiting Sri Lanka due to competition from local traders. Now they have sought other countries like Tanzania and Madagascar to purchase Geuda. Over two decades, the Thais have purchased over 20 tons of Geuda which they have processed and produced, particularly calibrated (cut into standard sizes to suit the need of casting jewellery manufacturing) stones and these have captured the world market for Blue Sapphires.If Sri Lankans are doing heat treatment why have they not been able to do what Thais did? Work over two decades and tons of material they have taken away have made them stock pile inventories of various sizes and colours in kilos and the buyers the world over visit Bangkok for their requirements, what little we produce is difficult to sold. What we need is to create a large inventory of heat-treated and calibrated gems locally and attract buyers who otherwise visit Bangkok.

If we have the technology why have still not been able to do it? Well to begin with Thais were financed by various financial organisations to kick start the business and it became self-propelling afterwards. The local traders have been requesting the seed capital from the government at reasonable terms to initiate heat-treatment in substantial scale and to maintain sufficient stocks to attract buyers.

Gems are weighed in carats (one fifth of a gram is equivalent to a carat, which in the corundum group will take the size of a small pepper seed) and we are talking of around a ton of Geuda taken to Thailand every year in rough form without value addition. The value enhancement on heating is said to be over 100% and a carat of finest blue sapphire could fetch over Rs. 30-40,000 and now can you image the amount of foreign exchange we loose every year due to export of rough Geuda?

Gem Trading Bank

An Act of Parliament was passed in 1993 to establish a Gem Trading Bank to provide finances exclusively for gem industry particularly to promote heat-treatments. 50% of paid up capital was to be provided by the treasury while the rest were to be contributed by the financial institutions and private sector companies. During subsequent years, the financial situation of the government deteriorated and hence this promised contribution was not forthcoming, thus the Gem Trading Bank did not materialise. Gem and Jewellery Task Force

The Ministry of Enterprise Development last year appointed task forces for various industrial sectors to propose five-year development plans for their sectors. The task force consisted of majority of its members from the private sector along with representatives from relevant government institutions and a private sector member chaired it. Recently the plan of the gem and jewellery sector was presented to the Minister, Prof. G. L. Peiris and the trade. The main theme of the plan was the heat-treatment of Geudacutting and polishing of the same and setting them in jewellery and over a period of five years, the export ofGeuda in rough form is to be automatically stopped as a result. So that Sri Lanka will be the Sapphire capital of the world not only processing our own stones but from other producing countries as well.

It was heartening to see that concurrently Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, and Minister of Enterprise Development Prof. G. L. Peiris have summoned key players of the gem and jewellery sector several times during the past two months and discussed ways and means of developing this industry and stressed the need of stopping the export of Geuda in rough form without value addition.

So it seems that the plans formulated by the task force and the concepts of the government are well matched. Subsequently many meetings were held with the participation of banks and it is pleasing to see that the banks have taken a keen interest in helping this industry so that we can earn a lot of foreign exchange through value addition and along the way create thousands of job opportunities in gem cutting and jewellery manufacturing.

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