LBMA Country of Origin Analysis Report 2024
Appendix: Gold and Silver Recycling Definitions
Recycling has always been pivotal in the gold and silver markets. In terms of the headline figures collated by Metals Focus, it will account for around 26% and 18% respectively of global supply in 2024. Furthermore, as the precious metals markets have placed greater emphasis on responsible sourcing, chain of custody and ESG, so recycling has increasingly found itself in the spotlight. This in turn has
fostered a debate, as to what recycling actually constitutes. In the context of this note, Metals Focus’ and LBMA’s definitions are laid out below. These vary considerably and reflect the different objectives of each organisation.
LBMA is focussed on the integrity of the supply chain within the GDL orbit, whose primary goals are “to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and human rights abuses, and respect the environment globally.”
Metals Focus’ approach has been developed over many years to provide as close an understanding as possible of the broad dynamics of the entire precious metals market, including the impact of each area of supply and demand. In the context of recycling, this means that the consultancy focuses on the recovery of gold and silver from old fabricated products. By definition, this will therefore not include the melting down, upgrading (where applicable) and recasting of 400oz gold and 1,000oz GDL silver bars, which account for a noteworthy portion of LBMA’s COO gold and silver recycling series.
Definitions
Metals Focus Definition1 | LBMA Definition |
---|---|
Includes old jewellery and silverware that are sold back into the supply chain, either by consumers or retailers. | There is no distinction between jewellery and silverware that is sold back by consumers, or exchanged for a new piece: both streams are included in the COO “unprocessed” or “melted” recycling datasets. |
Includes coins that have been fabricated, but never sold, that are subsequently melted down. | Gold and silver recovered from industrial products, in the “industrial by-products” segment |
Excludes: old jewellery that is exchanged for a new product, where the consumer pays the labour charge (this is common across Asia). | The LBMA COO data includes gold and silver process scrap collected from manufacturers; forms part of “unprocessed” recycling |
Excludes: “production” or “process” recycling, that is collected from jewellery, investment, industrial and dental manufacturers. | Includes all coins and bars, irrespective if they have been sold back by investors, returned unsold by the trade or delivered from a vault. As such, this includes the reprocessing of GDL bars (e.g. into smaller bar sizes) which forms part of the COO recycling dataset, either in “unprocessed” or “legacy stocks”. |
Excludes: the selling back of small investment bars and coins into the supply chain - these are categorised as disinvestment, not recycling. | Note: the COO statistics for recycling can include gold and/or silver that is recovered from base metals mining concentrates (instead Metals Focus report this as a component of mine production). |
Excludes: the melting down of GDL bars, of both gold and silver, for the purposes of e.g. small bar production. | |
1 Where possible the recycled gold and silver is counted in the region where it is generated, rather than where it is refined. |