After its disastrous maiden auction in Mauritius, Mustang Resources is making progress on sales.

The company was able to offload 18,288 carats of largely lower and medium quality stones in Thailand for $230,953 in March. The average price was $12.67 a carat.

In October last year, Mustang learned the hard way about how people like to buy their rubies when it took 405,000 carats to auction in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius.

Only eight of the 21 schedules were sold — to Thai and Indian companies — while the remaining 13 didn’t meet the reserve price.

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The auction was well-hyped before it took place and the failure saw Mustang’s share price drop by 69 per cent in a single day and the exit of head honcho Christiaan Jordaan not long after.

The company has since tried to shift focus to its graphite project, which is next door to the ruby development.

Mustang shut down its Mauritus sales and marketing office and set up a smaller, cheaper version in Chanthaburi, Thailand from which it’s selling its Mozambican rubies from the Montepuez ruby project.

Mustang’s share price has been a rollercoaster since the start of the year.

“The establishment of the marketing and sales office in Thailand has already generated significant interest from well-known international jewellery brands and customers who met Mustang and visited the office,” Mustang said.

The company says it’s now sold 395,374 carats for a total of about $1.76 million worth of rubies since September last year, at an average price of $4.44 a carat.

Mustang says it has a total ruby inventory of 329,309 carats available for sale.

Mustang shares were up 4 per cent at midday to 2.5c — still a long way from the heady height of 20c it reached before the Mauritius auction.

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