What is a Gold Refiner / Gold Refinery

The business of gold refining may not be as popular as retail or technology businesses, but just as other industrial companies, gold refinery services often produce significant revenues. As a producer and seller of precious metal, gold refiners live in a market of a value commodity that has seen success for many centuries.

There are two common methods to refining gold: using flame or using acidic chemicals. The use of flame is accomplished with temperatures in excess of 1,000 degrees Celsius, making this an extremely dangerous and well compensated job for refiners. The use of potent acids and chemicals is to dissolve the impure components of the gold, and then wash them away to reach a pure gold substance.

What Gold Refiners Do

The typical gold refining service provides its customers with a range of options to meet their specific needs. Some refiners supply directly to everyday consumers, while others focus on industrial businesses that deal with metals as a routine part of their own business. At the same time, some refiners deal solely with pure gold, while others deal with both pure gold and gold substance for the purpose of mixing it for other uses.

The main services the majority of all gold refineries offer involve assaying and parting. These services are related to the act of isolating the impurities and separating them from the pure gold content to determine the amount of purity. This allows the refiners to present a range of quality and quantity to clients for the determination of sales quotes. All companies generally use the same techniques that will indicate how much your gold is worth.

The process of gold refinery is rather is straightforward with operational steps. The refinery weighs the gold in whatever form it may be (jewelry, bullion) and then tags it. Assayers will take a sample from the gold and send it to a laboratory that will determine the gold composition. Then the refinery will use flame to work towards more detail of determining its composition. They may even try the acid test to determine its strength.

Where the Gold Refiners Money Comes From

The methods mentioned preciously are the main sources of revenue for gold refining companies. It starts with the impurity process. When refiners extract the impurities, that initial step is charged to the client. Now once the impurities are removed, the value of the gold increases instantly. This allows the refiner to charge a service fee, then a product fee on a valuable commodity.

For the customers bringing in their own large quantities of gold content with high karat value, it only turns into higher profits for the refinery company. Another source of revenue is the refining efforts with connections to industrial companies looking for sizable refining for the purpose of production of their own products. Of course these are larger orders from industrials resulting in higher revenue collected by the refiner. Not to mention the few companies who sell their gold on the commodity exchange.

Since the use of gold is used in several industries, the business of gold refining has continued to remain and thrive. We know the industrial industry uses gold materials regularly, but industries such as financial, medical and technology also have a common use of gold in their sector. Banks, financial institutions, marketplaces, and even the Government issues or trade gold coins and bullion bars. In the medical industry the use of gold has been introduced for a few treatments and for filings in the dental field. In the technology world, the use of gold can be found in the motherboard of computers.

The wide industry use makes gold refining companies not just profitable, but always essential. Refiners are the primary source for isolating the purest forms of precious metals. The customer base for gold refining companies is both individual clients and major companies. Gold is a worldwide commodity that has existed for many centuries and continues to have a valuable place in today’s marketplace.