"Returnable Rate" In A Settlement Report (Hong Kong)

Greetings all, I'm not in the industry, so this is a complete newbie question, apologies in advance.

I'm looking at a settlement report from a Hong Kong refinery, and I'm trying to confirm that I'm reading it right. I'd be extremely grateful if someone could help me clarify a heading called "returnable rate".

Otherwise, the numbers seem very straightforward, they are as follows:

Net Weight: 16003.40g
After Melt Weight: 16000.20g
Gold
Purity: 92.100%
Fine Content: 14736.180
Returnable Rate: 98.00%
Net Content: 14441.45
(the silver had a returnable rate of 0%)

And then their account balance read 14441.45, so I assume that the Net Content was credited to their account.

Is the "Returnable Rate" reflecting a 2% refiner's fee? Or is it the actual gold that was recovered? I thought that very little gold was lost in the final refining process, especially for such high quality input material. I've heard that the loss for a world class refinery should be in the 0.005% range...?

Other than googling as many terms as possible ("returnable rate", yield, recovery rate, etc.), I had a chance to look through the forums and started reading some fascinating articles, and suddenly hours have passed and it's almost 1am. So much great info here!

There is just a staggering amount of detailed knowledge put forth by contributors, and I really enjoyed the sense of community that has been developed here. It's really cool to see how people really put forth a helping hand to assist others, members have the right to be proud of the community that they've created here.

Anyway, apologies for my newbie question and thanks so much in advance for anyone who takes the time to read this!

They're charging a 2% fee on content of gold.


For that weight in grams, I'd expect a 0.35-0.45% charge.

Lou

Lou, thank you so much for the answer and for the sanity check - I may be wrong on a regular basis on a wide variety of topics, but I guess not this time (what not about a broken clock being right twice a day and all!).

Really much appreciated

Some refiners use the term accountability for the same thing. In this case they would be accountable for 98% of the gold content. Lou is right they hit you pretty hard for a high yield bar, you paid 12 grand to have it refined and their accountability on silver was 0%, so they kept it all. If this was a doré bar from mining that could be 5 or 6%. (another $450) Did you have a silver assay?

Nice turn for the refinery for very little work, that could be refined and sold within 48 hours at that high an assay and as was stated the silver not paid for would cover the costs :shock: :evil:

I too agree with the lads. 2% for such a large amount of high purity product is OTT.