By Mick Elmore, Bangkok Correspondent

CHANTHABURI, THAILAND - The flow of colored stones from Madagascar changed from blue to red early this year, with a flood of new rubies hitting Thailand's two big cutting and polishing centers.

The new ruby comes from two principal mines, one about 10 kilometers (6 miles) inland from the coastal town of Vatomandry, and the other approximately 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the town of Andilamena. There are other ruby mines on the island nation, and surely more to be found, but at press time all the stones arriving in Thailand were from those two mines, in different locations but only a few hours from the capital, Antananarivo.

The Vatomandry mine was the first one discovered and is said to produce better-quality material than the mines in Andilamena. The mine was closed in December -- shortly after it opened -- and remains closed.

"[The government] tried to close Andilamena and couldn't," said Tom Cushman of Allerton-Cushman, a U.S.-based gem wholesaler who spends much of his time in Madagascar. "[The area] is out of control; it has produced tons of ruby since January."

The ruby from Andilamena is available in huge quantities, but very little of it is high-quality.

Dealers in Chanthaburi said rubies from the Vatomandry mine were "a little bit purple," and rubies from the Andilamena mine were slightly brown. "The ruby from Madagascar is clear, with not much inclusion. It is clean and dark. But the color, well, Burmese looks sweeter. The weak point is Burmese has more inclusions, cracks," Smit Lohploy with Lohploy Gems in Chanthaburi told Colored Stone.

Talking with other dealers in Chanthaburi and Bangkok, the feelings are pretty much the same -- the Madagascar stones are clean, and there is a market for them.

"We started to see a lot in January and February. It was new, so there was a lot of interest, but the Burmese ruby is better so it didn't do well," Khun Tanuson of Tanuson Gems in Chanthaburi told Colored Stone.

The difficult part for Thai dealers has been deciding where to price them.

Prices for the best of the Madagascan rubies, the clean material from the Andilamena mine, were between 13,000 and 18,000 baht (US$300 to $400) per carat at the high point in March, but were down to about 8,000 baht ($190) per carat in early May.

For more extensive coverage of the Madagascar ruby market, see the July/August 2001 issue of Colored Stone.