Industry desk · Zurich
Tomas Herrera
Industry correspondent
Tomas Herrera covers the part of the gold trade that almost nobody photographs: the refineries, assay labs and accredited melters that turn ambiguous material into a bar somebody will accept without arguing. He has walked the floor of refineries in Switzerland, the UAE and Singapore, and he asks the same three questions everywhere — where did the feedstock come from, who verified it, and what happens when the verification is wrong.
His reporting is technical without being unreadable. He explains cupellation, aqua regia parting and Miller chlorination the way a good foreman would explain them to a new hire, then follows the chain of custody paperwork that decides whether the resulting bar is worth spot price or a discount.
Before journalism he worked in industrial quality assurance, which is where he learned that most scandals are documentation failures long before they are criminal ones.
Stories by Tomas
Origins · 10 August 2026
Where Gold Actually Comes From
Every gram of gold on Earth was manufactured in an astrophysical catastrophe, arrived here after the planet had already formed, and was then concentrated by hot water. Three separate accidents, none of them likely, all of them necessary.
18 min read
Materials · 9 August 2026
The Metallurgy of Karat
Pure gold is too soft to hold a stone, too soft to hold an edge, and the wrong colour for half the world's taste. Almost everything you own that is gold is a designed alloy — and the design is where the engineering lives.
16 min read
Environment · 7 August 2026
After the Cyanide
Every ounce of mined gold leaves behind roughly a tonne of processed rock and the water that carried it. What happens to that material after the last shift is the part of the industry with the longest timeline and the least coverage.
17 min read
Verification · 7 August 2026
How Fake Gold Is Detected
Counterfeiting gold is not about making something that looks right. It is about defeating a specific test, and the industry's defences are an escalating conversation between forgers and instruments.
15 min read
Industrial Demand · 4 August 2026
The Gold Inside Your Phone
Industrial demand is the quietest third of the gold market: a few tenths of a gram per handset, multiplied by billions of devices, chosen not for prestige but because nothing else conducts as reliably for as long.
15 min read
Recovery · 28 July 2026
Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone
A tonne of good underground ore holds a few grams of gold. A tonne of discarded circuit boards can hold two hundred. So why is most of it still going into landfill?
13 min read
Industry Report · 2 July 2026
Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery
A doré bar arrives at 85 per cent purity and leaves at 99.99. Between those two numbers sit chlorine gas, aqua regia, an electrolytic cell and a chain of custody that is now as valuable as the metal itself.
12 min read