Gannon & Scott, Phoenix, Arizona -- Any experiences?

[Auggie]

I am in the process of locating a refiner for my roughly two tons of PCBs varying in grade from low to high. This week I have a visit from a representative of Gannon & Scott in Phoenix, Arizona.

http://www.gannon-scott.com/

Does anyone have any experiences dealing with them they might be able to share?

Thanks.

P.S. Please also consider this an invitation to solicit your services in private mail, if you are so inclined I am near San Francisco. I would prefer a refiner nearer to me (i.e. west coast) to keep transportation costs down. I would also prefer actual bullion returned, and I am partial to being able to witness the process. I am not necessarily interested in squeezing out every last penny, but I am interested in an honest outfit with a superior process and a history of good dealings. I will be ready to go sometime in the late summer or early fall.

 

[Anonymous]

I would highly suggest that you seperate the boards into catagories,and sell them outright.If you do insist on selling them to a refinery,make sure you are with the material at all times!I sold a load of material (800lbs)
http://s306.photobucket.com/albums/nn253/mariannalice/4-2-12/ ,but the owner of the refinery said that 400 lbs of dirty and lower grade boards,showed up,and a bunch of the boards in the pictures did not.The owner of the refinery also said they had pictures of these dirty low grade boards,but when I asked him to produce the pictures,he ceased all comunication with me.So I would suggest selling them outright,or making sure you stay with them.
New link posted,sorry about that.
The owner also said that he did not see any of the material that was in the bags,or the material in the small containers.

 

[Westerngs]

Gannon and Scott earned a bad reputation back in the early 2000's when it was discovered that some company officers were knowingly lowballing customer returns. See link below.

I believe that company has cleaned up its act since, but it is always better if you can rep your material yourself or hire a reputable company such as Inspectorate or AH Knight to do so for you.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-25-09.html

 

[Lou]

Gannon and Scott do exactly the same thing that Colt or ECS does (or "insert other electronic scrap consolidator")--they get the material into a form that is more easily assayed, remove as much nonbearing nonmetallics and magnetic materials as possible, sample/assay, blend, send overseas or up to Canada.

All goes to an electrolytic copper refiner.

 

[Auggie]

Thank you all for the very helpful replies. My visit went well and they were nice enough guys. They were only interested in my high grade stuff. They only recover on gold/silver/platinum (no mention of palladium). I asked about copper and they said they don't bother with the copper. I also showed them my bin of gold-plated connector ends but they were not interested: "too low grade". Interestingly, they also considered PC motherboards to be "low grade". I was told in an e-mail from one of them beforehand that a return of metal was possible, but when I asked them about it in person there seemed to be unspoken "caveats" I could sense in their response.

Lou, I sell other material to ECS but have never had success trying to negotiate a good price with them on my scrap circuit boards. They pay a buck less per pound for motherboards than the outfit I usually take mine to and they won't even consider returning any of the metal. From what I remember reading their website, they produce mixed-metal dore bars and send them off to one of their refining facilities (I believe somewhere outside the US) for further refining.

I've been speaking to reps at Xstrata in San Jose and so far they seem to be the best choice. They pay out on Au/Ag/Pt/Pd and Cu. The only thing is they will not pay out with metal returned, or I guess maybe they are just upfront and honest about that aspect.

In fact, asking for metal back seems to be something most refiners consider taboo. Is there some reason why getting metal back from the actual material you submit is such a non-starter for refiners? From what I gather it's a result of government regulations? Apparently, someone somewhere wants the gold, and they don't want you getting your hands on it. Another reason to just keep most of the good stuff and process it myself and sell off the rest as mid/low-grade to a refiner and let them extract the remnants.

 

[nickvc]

If the companies your talking to don't actually refine but just recover they probably don't have metals to return without getting the end refiner to supply them with them and as Lou said chances are they ship to copper refiners who again don't usually refine the values themselves.

 

[Lou]

I don't think any of them do the refining and they don't want to deal with the options pricing and leasing as well as the physical transport and risks associated with it--for the most part, this is what separates an actual full service refiner from a consolidator/processor/broker. Most are in category two and have limited smelting capabilities; they probably sort, crush, grind/mill, sieve out oversize, perhaps have eddy current separation and magnetic classification to concentrate the values. They'll take a sample of the concentrates on a blended batch.

Given the amount of high technology and process control it takes to do this stuff in earnest, it makes good economic sense to send it out. They leave that to the chemists at Umicore or Aurubis or XStrata-Noranda (there's several more). Auggie, you must be moving some serious weight: X-strata wants 40,000 lbs a month...last time I dealt with them on anything was end of last year.

If you think about it, anyone who is doing electrolytic copper refining is the likely choice for a high grade copper dore with PMs contained. These companies service mines as well. A cell house like they have is beaucoup bucks and takes a lot of power. So if they're not by a power plant or a dam, probably not the end of the road.




I forgot SIPI metals as well.

 

[Auggie]

Lou, I wish I was moving 40K lbs a month. I certainly wouldn't be here chatting with you people :lol:

In this case I have about 2 tons of material. Both Xstrata (formerly Noranda) reps I talked to--one last year who dropped the ball on me by retiring, and the one I'm currently dealing with--had no problem with my pitifully small stash. I've always heard that large refiners want at least one ton of material to make it worth their while.

FWIW, I am attaching a diagram of Xstrata's process...Um, okay, I'm not, as the either the forum server is messed up or there's something wrong on my end. I'll try uploading later from another computer.

UPDATE: diagram attached.

 

[Lou]

Looks about right.

 

[Auggie]

I remember what I was going to ask...why do they shred it and then run it through the furnace? I would think you'd want to run it through a furnace first, then hammer mill it. It seems that would make the material easier to crush.

I'm sure there's a good reason, I just don't know.

 

[Westerngs]

The smaller the material is going into a furnace the better it mixes with the flux, helping the smelting process. It is very difficult to break down material in a furnace when it is in big chunks.

 

[pinwheel]

So has anyone run a load through Gannon in Phoenix yet? I am interested to know the returns on types of materials as I might be trying them out soon.