Metalor fees

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irvtemes

Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2013
Messages
11
how much does metalor charge in fees to refine karat scrap? what percentage do they pay on the purity recovered?
 
The guys are correct. It's very easy to do. Ring them up and ask for a copy of their refining terms.

Jon
 
Before you can deal with any of the major refiners you have to have a business and you need to be prepared to ship them a minimum quantity of metal on some sort of regular schedule. So before you call them, be prepared to answer their questions. If you are of the size to deal with a company like Metalor or any of the other majors, likely you would have been called on by their sales force.
 
Topher_osAUrus said:
goldsilverpro said:
You might ask Metalor.


Their name sounds like a villain's from a marvel movie.

That may be why they don't have their terms listed on their website. :shock:

Because they deal with companies and offer different terms dependent upon the quantities they are taking in and the type of product. As 4metals said. You have to contact them to find out. If you're sending in a small amount why should they offer you the same terms someone who is sending them 1000 tonnes per month?
 
spaceships said:
Topher_osAUrus said:
goldsilverpro said:
You might ask Metalor.


Their name sounds like a villain's from a marvel movie.

That may be why they don't have their terms listed on their website. :shock:

Because they deal with companies and offer different terms dependent upon the quantities they are taking in and the type of product. As 4metals said. You have to contact them to find out. If you're sending in a small amount why should they offer you the same terms someone who is sending them 1000 tonnes per month?

Haha! We'll, im not the OP, but, I personally would never be at the level where they even think of me.

I just couldn't/can't get over their name

-topher
 
True. You have to be working with a fairly decent monthly quantity to even approach Metalor. Certainly not for the 5 or 10 oz a month person.
 
Major refiners refer to the gold buyers they do business with as collectors. The benefit for them in doing business with collectors is that they settle once, with one melt and one assay on all of the jobs the collector collected to make up the lot. It saves them a lot of melt time, assay time and settlements, phone calls etc.

So applying a bit of business sense, is it easier to deal with one big account or 100 little accounts? So to get the bigger accounts you have to give attractive rates, much more attractive than you could afford to give any of the 100 little accounts.

And every collector has rates based on his or her size. So it is not something that can be published, because if one of the 100 little guys who brings in to a collector could look up and see what the collector is being charged, they would all try to negotiate a better deal because for some reason everyone assumes a refiner is making a fortune. Often an honest collector works on a very small margin. Key word here is honest! :roll:
 
In Europe the Ante up you need to get a seat at the big table is quite substantial.
low grade e-scrap (under Au 75 ppm), i.e. circuit boards form TV/hifi, lot sizes between 25 mT and 100 mT are recommended
- for medium grade qualities (above Au 75 ppm),i.e. IT printed circuit boards, lot sizes between about 10 mT and 50 mT are
acceptable.
- for high grade material (Au > 200 ppm) the acceptable lot sizes are between 10 mT and 20 mT.
For cell phone handsets without batteries,they can accept a minimum of 2 mT per lot.
- for very high grade material (Au > 500 ppm), i.e. RAM’s or memory boards, plastic based components, , … lot sizes
between 1 and 5 mT are acceptable.
- Ceramic high grade components (i.e. CPU’s): lot sizes between 1 and 3 mT.
seems like a very good reason small operators should stop trying to make a quick buck out of each other and put the carving knives away.If they worked together and satisfied the entry requirements every one would profit.
Such levels are almost impossible to achieve with out working with people or steeping on them.
 
Jake the Metalor rep stopped by our place the other day. I have been negotiating fees with him ever since. We haven't switched over yet as we handle a high percentage of plated material and that is not what they do best.
 
I am tardy in replying to the prior posts , however, people should not assume what people have or what volume they do based on their questions. I have been in touch with Metalor in the past and they were not the most welcoming because the refiner I was using is one of their customers and they quoted me terms a little under what he alledgedly pays...............I am guessing they did not want to compete with their customer which is why they quoted what they did. At this time I was doing about 400-500K per month in jewelry scrap.

Like most other brokers like me my volume has reduced a lot due to market conditions to 100-150k per month in jewelry scrap which normally is 53-56% pure.........so also like a lot of other brokers I am looking at other avenues to increase my return...........so I guess the questions should have been----
1. Would Metalor accept a customer that has been in business since 1983 and currently only does 1.5-2.0
million a year in karat scrap.

2. I use three different refiners and they all pay about the same 99% on M&A on the gold and 90% on the
recovered silver, obviously these people call themselves refiners but they are really brokers that in all
probability sell to Metalor as well.............so the question is would I make more dealing directly with
Metalor (if my volume was acceptable to them) after their fees as compared to the terms I now have from
three sources at 99% of M&A, I am assuming the purity percentage will go up dealing with Metalor as will
the fees. I was hoping some members who have been in similar circumstances in the past could share their
experience.........thank you all who have replied in the past and reply to this post...Happy Holidays
 
OK, so in that case why would you sell to Metalor and not send your gear in and be paid on out turn instead?

Brokers usually make a percentage point or two depending on their own terms but then often pay their client a large chunk of the money up front. Obviously if you are sending your gear in direct then you'll benefit from the slightly higher return but if you think that the extra return is going to be massive then you'll wait a long time.
 
Do you melt your own bars in house to sample before shipment? Do you witness your melt at your current refiner? In a perfect world the answers to these questions should not matter, but in reality it does matter and may influence your decision where you send your material.
 
irvtemes said:
I am tardy in replying to the prior posts , however, people should not assume what people have or what volume they do based on their questions. I have been in touch with Metalor in the past and they were not the most welcoming because the refiner I was using is one of their customers and they quoted me terms a little under what he alledgedly pays...............I am guessing they did not want to compete with their customer which is why they quoted what they did. At this time I was doing about 400-500K per month in jewelry scrap.

Like most other brokers like me my volume has reduced a lot due to market conditions to 100-150k per month in jewelry scrap which normally is 53-56% pure.........so also like a lot of other brokers I am looking at other avenues to increase my return...........so I guess the questions should have been----
1. Would Metalor accept a customer that has been in business since 1983 and currently only does 1.5-2.0
million a year in karat scrap.

2. I use three different refiners and they all pay about the same 99% on M&A on the gold and 90% on the
recovered silver, obviously these people call themselves refiners but they are really brokers that in all
probability sell to Metalor as well.............so the question is would I make more dealing directly with
Metalor (if my volume was acceptable to them) after their fees as compared to the terms I now have from
three sources at 99% of M&A, I am assuming the purity percentage will go up dealing with Metalor as will
the fees. I was hoping some members who have been in similar circumstances in the past could share their
experience.........thank you all who have replied in the past and reply to this post...Happy Holidays


Howdy Irv,

Metalor would very likely accept your business, given low scrap volumes that not just you, but most of us experience domestically. This is presuming there are no compliance issues in setting up your account. I don't know the state of affairs post acquisition for them. Usually big refiners don't like to poach little refiners' business that gets sent to them anyway. So leave your last refiner off your reference list.

At the end of the day, refining gold from karat is stupid simple. There's really not that much to distinguish any high grade/karat refiner except their honesty on assay and how much they want your business (i.e. speed of transaction, customer service, etc.). You're at the mercy of an assayer and a melt guy and guess what-- it's the sampling and assay that matter. And really, like 4metals was saying, unless you're taking the expense to witness and check the refiner's results every time, you need to be prepared to accept that honesty comes with a price and so too do "great rates". I've had off days in industry, so has every other refiner I've dealt with--all of them have been dead wrong at least once--it's the willingness to address it that's important.

Part of the whole "brokering" thing is that anymore, big refining is tied at the hip with big banking. Most Tier 1 Good Delivery refiners are doing perhaps 3-5 tons of gold a week, if not more, and 10-20X that in silver. This allows economies of scale to prevail. So the little refiners, even if they do refine it to pure, they must find their own outlets and invariably don't have the money/hedging/trading/flexibility that the big guys do. Usually it's much easier to simply sell on pure gold for a slight discount to spot price and nigh instant funds.

I always refine high grade gold to pure and then sell it on as it greatly simplifies the transaction. I would never, ever, ever send karat scrap to any refiner when I can easily refine it myself and make the result something that cannot be argued with--I owe my customers more than that.
 
I must admit I agree with Lou but in my case I simply melt and assay and trade the bar on the assay, I,m lucky I guess as I can get fast cheap assays so refining is not necessary or even worthwhile.
 
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