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20 results for “Minamata Convention”
Mining · 22 May 2026
The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem
…ring visible gold within hours. It requires almost no equipment or capital. · What is the Minamata Convention? A global treaty addressing mercury, which specifically requires signatory states with significant ASGM to produce national action plans to reduce and where feasible elim…
Amara Okonjo · 12 min read
Mining · 5 August 2026
Grade, Cut-off and the Arithmetic of an Open Pit
…de 3:1 Typical strip ratio: waste tonnes moved per tonne of ore 88–94% Recovery range for conventional carbon-in-leach circuits 1–2 yrs Time from ore in the pit to metal at the refinery, including stockpiles · Cut-off grade: where accounting becomes geology · Every tonne coming o…
Amara Okonjo · 16 min read
Markets · 2 August 2026
Who Actually Sets the Gold Price
…in a specific place, in a specific form of the metal, under a specific set of settlement conventions — and if you change any one of those variables the number changes with it. · The number almost always means this: an ounce of gold, of Good Delivery quality, held unallocated in…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Craft · 22 July 2026
Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold
…enforcement funding falls, the mark degrades from a verified statement into a decorative convention. · That erosion is gradual and largely invisible to buyers, which is precisely the danger. A system like this works because it is boringly reliable; it stops working the moment th…
Yusuf Demir · 12 min read
Science · 9 August 2026
The Metallurgy of Karat
…ment as the karat figure, expressed as parts per thousand. It is the modern international convention and it is unambiguous in a way that '18k' printed on an unhallmarked import is not. In jurisdictions with a compulsory hallmarking regime, that number has been verified by an inde…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Industry · 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…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Markets · 20 June 2026
Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation
For half a century it was rational to store your gold in someone else's basement. Then the calculus of counterparty risk changed, and reserve managers started chartering aircraft. · Overseas custody w…
Ingrid Sørensen · 13 min read
Industry · 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. ·…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
Between the vault and the buyer sits an industry of armoured vehicles, sealed cargo, bonded warehouses and insurance clauses. It rarely makes news, and it is the reason a spot price in London can dive…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read
Industry · 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 i…
Tomas Herrera · 12 min read
Craft · 5 June 2026
The Alchemy of Craft: What Goldsmiths Know That Machines Don't
Gold's working properties are so extreme they border on the absurd — one gram drawn into three kilometres of wire. Inside a trade where the tools have barely changed and the hands are irreplaceable. ·…
Yusuf Demir · 11 min read
Industry · 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…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
History · 14 July 2026
The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money
For roughly five thousand years, humanity kept returning to the same element to settle its debts. The story is less about greed than about the unusually boring chemistry of atomic number 79. · Gold's…
Marguerite Adler · 14 min read
History · 9 August 2026
The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us
A field of gold torcs and coins is a spectacular find and a treacherous document. The people who buried it were not writing to us, and the reasons they had for putting it in the ground are exactly wha…
Marguerite Adler · 16 min read
Science · 8 August 2026
The Metal That Went Medical
Divide gold finely enough and it stops being gold-coloured, stops being inert in the way you expect, and starts doing work in places no bullion bar could reach — including the test strip that told you…
Amara Okonjo · 15 min read
Industry · 6 August 2026
The Scrap Trade
Roughly a quarter of the world's annual gold supply has been gold before. It arrives as broken chains, single earrings and dental crowns, and it moves through a chain of intermediaries that most selle…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Craft · 3 August 2026
The Wedding-Season Bid: How Jewellery Demand Sets the Floor
Half the world's gold is worn, not stored. In India and China that distinction barely exists — and the buying behaviour it produces is the most reliably contrarian force in the entire market. · Jewell…
Yusuf Demir · 16 min read
Industry · 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? · Concentration, not tonnage, is wh…
Tomas Herrera · 13 min read
Science · 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 o…
Tomas Herrera · 18 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
For three decades official institutions were net sellers of bullion, and the policy consensus treated the metal as a museum piece. Then, quietly, the world's reserve managers reversed. The reasons are…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read
