Kagem brings rough emeralds to Jaipur, and 60 cutters skip the London room

§1Nineteen days, one Zambian miner, and sixty benches.

The 13th India Rough Gemstones Sourcing Show opened in Jaipur on 24 August and runs to 11 September, a nineteen-day window, according to the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council's release of 25 August. Kagem Mining Ltd of Zambia is showing rough emeralds. The council puts attendance at more than 60 Indian coloured-gemstone manufacturers and names R.K. Chandan, Commissioner of Customs at Jaipur, as chief guest, with Jeevan Ram Dhaka, Assistant Commissioner of Customs at ACC Jaipur, Yogendra Garg, the council's regional chairman for Rajasthan, and D.P. Khandelwal, convener of its coloured gemstones panel, also present. The stated purpose is to let Indian manufacturers buy rough at source without travelling abroad.

§2This paper has already priced the goods.

Kagem is the part of this worth pricing, and this paper has already priced it. The mine is Gemfields' Zambian emerald operation, 75% owned by the company, with the Industrial Development Corporation of Zambia holding the rest. Its higher-quality rough emerald auction, held in London across May and reported here on 24 July, took $26.8 million, clearing 36 of 37 lots and 183,385 of the 185,135 carats offered at an average of $146.08 a carat, 99% by weight. Across the first half of 2026 Gemfields took $102.9 million from auctions in total, 72% more than the same half of 2025, as this paper reported on 31 July. A London auction room is where those carats have been priced. Jaipur is not that room, and no price from this show has been published.

§3The travel goes away. The currency does not.

What the show changes is the cost of reaching the goods rather than the cost of the goods. India cuts most of the world's rough colour, and a manufacturer in Jaipur bidding on a Kagem book has until now had to be in London, or represented there, to do it. Removing that removes airfare, visa time and the intermediary's margin for a firm too small to send anyone. It does not remove the currency. This paper noted on 24 July that the Indian rupee had lost roughly 10% against the dollar since September 2025, and Gemfields' own sales management named that weakness as a drag on the trade's largest cutting hub. Rough sold at a Jaipur show is still sold in dollars, and a weaker rupee makes a $146 carat dearer at a Rajasthan bench whether the bench flies to London or walks across the city.

What the council did not publish is most of what a trade paper would want. There is no value on the rough shown, no carat weight on offer, no number of lots, no indication whether goods move by tender, by negotiation or not at all during the nineteen days, and no result, because the show does not close until 11 September.

The figure of more than 60 manufacturers is the council's own count and is not independently audited. Kagem is the only source-country miner named in the release this desk read. On the evidence available this is a confirmed event with confirmed officials and no confirmed commerce, and it is reported here on that basis.