Garnet As A Dual Purpose Mineral

Garnet is a semiprecious gemstone, and is highly popular mineral gem stone among women across the world. The word Garnet is derived from its Latin origin, called Granatus, which means ‘like a grain’. Currently, the world's largest supplier of garnet gems is the African continent. Garnet exhibits the highest variety of colour of any mineral, occurring in every color except for blue.

Garnet is not a single mineral, but is the name of a group of six members having different mineralogical compositions but common order of crystallization, hardness, specific gravity etc. In general, they are silicates of aluminium with different proportions of iron, calcium, magnesium, chromium & manganese in the composition giving rise to different varieties.

The use of garnets as a gem or gemstone can be traced to prehistoric times. However, the first industrial use of garnet appears to have been as coated sandpaper manufactured in the United States in the late 1800’s.

Garnet is non-toxic, inert and hence environment friendly.  Almandine garnet is one of the best natural abrasive and is preferred over other natural abrasives like Silica sand, mineral sands and flint.

Garnet's unique grain hardness / toughness guarantees efficiency in blasting and reduce the break-down percentage on impact. About 65% of garnet can be recovered and recycled twice or thrice.

One of the premier companies that indulge in heavy mineral mining is V.V. Mineral. V.V Mineral is a family grown business started by Mr. S Vaikundarajan, Founder, Chairman & Managing Director, VV Group. Being India’s biggest mining, manufacturers and exporters of Garnet V.V. Mineral has been awarded as the ‘Number One Garnet Exporters’ of our country. Zircon mining, Rutile mining and Ilmenite mining are some of the other mining activities that VV Minerals engage in.