Our Origins - Sapphire to High Purity Alumina

Lava Blue’s roots trace back to Lava Plains, North Queensland, which in the 1960s and 1970s supplied more than 10% of the world’s blue sapphires. Sapphire is the crystal form of Aluminium as Al2O3, a gemstone formed in the first stages of volcanic eruptions and spread across the landscape in superheated laharic flows of volcanic ash and basalt ‘bombs’. The same weathered volcanic ash from which the sapphire was won was also the first material from which we refined high purity alumina. We first achieved 4N HPA (>99.99% pure alumina) in March 2018 from this rich red earth using our HCl processing methods as illustrated in the photo below.