Refinery

A refinery (also affinery) is a specialised facility that extracts precious metals from impure source materials and processes them into high-purity fine metal. The term "refining" refers to the separation of metals from one another — for example, gold from silver, copper or platinum.

What Refineries Process

Raw materials come from two sources:

• Primary material: Doré bars and concentrates directly from mining operations.
• Secondary material (recycling): Dental gold, jewellery and broken gold, industrial scrap, catalytic converters and electronic waste.

From this mixture, fine gold (999.9), fine silver and the platinum-group metals are produced at standard market purity — as bars, granules or casting material.

How Refining Works

The classic processes involve affining through chemistry and electrolysis. In the Miller process, chlorine gas is passed through molten gold to bind the base metals; the Wohlwill process uses electrolysis to achieve the highest purities above 999.9. Silver is typically refined electrolytically. Only this level of purity makes the metal a marketable commodity whose value is precisely measured against the spot price.

Significance for Sellers of Scrap Gold

Anyone selling scrap gold is indirectly feeding into the material cycle of refineries. Reputable buyers determine the fineness through analysis and pay a fair share of the material value. Some refineries also purchase directly from private individuals — often on better terms than intermediary dealers, since one trade level is eliminated. What is realistic is shown by the buying price calculator; the pure material value is provided by the melt value calculator.

LBMA Good Delivery

The most reputable refineries are listed on the Good Delivery List of the London Bullion Market Association. Bars from these houses are recognised worldwide as being of unimpeachable quality and do not need to be re-assayed on resale — a quality mark that also increases the resaleability of investment bars.

In Brief

Refineries stand at the beginning and the end of the precious metals cycle: they turn ore and scrap gold back into tradeable fine metal. For sellers of broken and dental gold, they are — directly or through buyers — the decisive source of value.