Physical Market Report

IMPROVEMENTS TO THE CURRENT AND FORMER GOOD DELIVERY LISTS

Last year, in December, we made a number of improvements to the design of the Current and Former Gold and Silver Good Delivery Lists on our website. We’ve also added additional information to provide greater clarity.

NEW FORMER LIST EXPLANATION

We’ve added information to explain why a refiner has been transferred to the Former List and when a refiner has been suspended pending the outcome of a review. In respect of the latter, the refiner will continue to appear on the Current List; however, its Listing will be marked as suspended. All changes to Bar Markings and changes to the name of a refiner have been removed from the Former List and, instead, are now included in the Current List (under the category of History).

GOLD Shenzhen Cuilu Gold Refinery Co., Ltd Dongwu Gold Group Co., Ltd Tau-Ken Altyn Metalor Precious Metals (Suzhou) Ltd

SILVER Guangxi Nandan Nanfang Metal Co., Ltd

The recent trend has been changed and there is now a strong interest to list from China, for both silver and gold. Current and pending applications are also evenly split between gold and silver refiners.

NEW RULES DOCUMENT
A new Rulebook was launched in December.

Last year, the Executive and the LBMA Physical Committee discussed a full review of the current Good Delivery List Rules and the development of a Rulebook that covers all aspects of being a Good Delivery List refiner. This document will ensure consistency and transparency.

There was significant input from the LBMA Executive, LBMA Physical Committee – particularly its Chairman – and other stakeholders. The most significant change to the Rules is the enforcement of the Tangible Net Worth requirement of £15 million. Please refer to Section 3: Quality Assurance/Section 3.1: Throughput and Tangible Net Worth (TNW), for full details.

GOOD DELIVERY RULES – CHINESE VERSION LAUNCHED JUNE

To facilitate better communications between LBMA and the Chinese precious metals market, we have been working closely with the Shanghai Gold Exchange and Good Delivery Facilitators to translate the LBMA Good Delivery Rulebook into Chinese. This will provide additional support to Chinese refineries that wish to apply for Good Delivery Listing, in addition to providing continued support to our existing Chinese refiners on the Gold and Silver Good Delivery Lists.

VAULT TRAINING (VOAS)
LBMA launched its Vault Operators Training in April. Vaults globally can now provide training to their operators using LBMA’s new universal online platform. The Vault Operators Training provides all the learning resources and assessment tools needed to ensure vault operators apply the same high standards as the London Vaults.

PROFICIENCY TESTING (INCLUDING TREND ANALYSIS)

The results of the ninth round of the Proficiency Training (PT) Scheme were published in January, with 50 labs participating in gold and 46 in silver. The performance of laboratories participating in the LBMA PT have been increasing steadily.

LBMA CERTIFIED REFERENCE MATERIALS (CRMS)

The LBMA Reference Materials Steering Committee has produced the second set of silver CRMs suitable for the validation of analytical methods as well as for calibration of analytical instruments.

These were manufactured by Tanaka Kikinzoku K.K. of Japan and certified with the support and cooperation of some of the world’s leading precious metals laboratories.

The silver CRMs are sold as sets of two units. The Gold Certified Reference Materials are in the process of being analysed for homogeneity and the elements contained. These will be available to purchase very soon.

REFINER NUMBERS

TOTAL GOLD 70
TOTAL SILVER 83

There are now 104 refiners on the Good Delivery Lists (GDL). We have 70 refiners listed for gold, 83 listed for silver and 49 refiners appear on both Lists. There is still a large number of refiners attempting to get their brands onto the Lists and there are currently six active applications, with half that number pending. There have been two removals due to operations closure or issues.