(IDEX Online) - More than 900,000 carats of rough Australian sapphires are to be sold at what is being billed as the first auction of its kind.The event is being organized in Bangkok, Thailand, by Fura Gems, which says it will produce 5.5m carats of Australian sapphires this year, and almost double - 10m - in 2022.It describes the sale as "the first-ever, organized, global auction of Australian sapphires".Over 50 clients from Bangkok, Australia, Canada, and India are expected from today (15 November) until 23 November for a wide selection of blue, green, yellow, teal and parti (mixed color) gems.Fura, founded in 2017 by former Gemfields CEO Dev Shetty and based in UAE, also mines emeralds in Colombia and rubies in Mozambique."The auction in Bangkok will be historic as the market will get a first look at our graded, unheated and versatile range of coloured sapphires in blue, green, yellow, teal and parti colours," said Mr Shetty, CEO and founder of Fura. "We are bringing in rare colors in quantity."Three quarters of the world's sapphires were still being produced by artisanal or small-scale miners (2017 figure, The Gemstones and Jewellery Community Platform).Fura says it has the largest mechanized sapphire mining facility in Australia, covering 2,000 hectares at two locations.Pic courtesy Fura Gems