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Friday, 31st July 2009 (1723 views)

Changing market conditions and the vagaries of demand for different products and services mean gold refiners have to be "continually innovative", an expert has said.

Geoff Millet is managing director of Rand Refineries, which was originally established in 1920 by South Africa's Chamber of Mines to refine all the gold produced in the country, Mining Weekly reports.

Since then, Rand Refineries has refined 40,000 tonnes of the precious metal but with producers and refiners across the world facing changing conditions, the firm has had to diversify.

Around 40 per cent of the gold it refines now comes from outside South Africa.

In the 1990s, the firm also started producing "value-added" products, such as gold bars, Krugerrand blanks and semi-fabricated gold items for jewellery makers, including wire, solder paste and granules.

Mr Millet said the firm aims to be the "value-added conduit for the gold mining industry to optimise the resources the country has available".

South Africa's Chamber of Mines was founded in October 1889 to represent private sector mining firms and to encourage cooperation on industry-level policy issues.

 

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