Service to refining customers
By providing distinctive services to our refining customers, Umicore Precious Metals Refining is recognized as a world class player, not only for the quality of its technologies and products, but also for the quality of its services.
- The company often acts as a toll refiner, where the valuable metals contained in the raw materials are credited to the refining customer's metal account, followed by physical shipment, repurchase or account-to-account transfer.
- Alternatively, Umicore Precious Metals Refining purchases the raw materials (or more precisely, the metals contained) and uses its expertise to sell these at the best available market conditions.
- Metals within our VAT warehouse can be used for trading purposes. This administrative flexibility allows chain sales on refined metals, located in Hoboken, without application of the Belgian VAT and without VAT registration of foreign third parties in Belgium, as Umicore will act as representative to perform VAT-reporting duties.
- Specific services can be provided, such as metal transfers, leasing, geo-swaps, metal-swaps or any other techniques aimed at reducing capital employed or matching our customers' needs.
Sales
In addition to above metal-related services to its refining customers, Umicore Precious Metals Refining sells a wide range of metals/products as refined metal, compound or unrefined intermediate as the case may be, ranging from precious metals (Ag, Au, Pt, Pd, Rh, Ir, Ru) to base metals (Pb, Cu), minor metals (In, Te, Se, Sb, Sn, Bi) and derivated products (H2SO4, aggregates).
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The business unit Umicore Precious Metals Management in Hanau (Germany) and South Plainfield (New Jersey, USA) secures precious metal supplies for Umicore's valued metal customers, providing tailor made metals management solutions to Umicore’s product customers.
Please note that we do not sell directly to private investors – sales are conducted through industrial consumers, banks and certain trading partners.
Base metals
Lead (Pb)
Due to its excellent ability to store chemical energy (which, in turn, can be converted into electrical energy) lead rapidly became the leading energy storage material for batteries. Other applications are in construction, e.g. as PVC stabilisers and in TV-screens.
Lead is easily recyclable. Today, 60% of the world's needs comes from recycled lead.
Umicore Precious Metals Refining produces a substantial amount of primary refined lead. Its capacity is 125,000 tonnes per year. Though different grades were produced in the past, our current production is LME branded 99.99% lead.
Umicore Precious Metals Refining produces an LME registered lead brand and is also conformant to the LME Track A Responsible Sourcing Policy for lead.
LME Track A Compliance Report for Lead
Copper (Cu)
Umicore Precious Metals Refining produces non-Grade A copper cathodes in its Hoboken plant and has a capacity of 36,000 tonnes per year.
Nickel (Ni)
Umicore Precious Metals Refining produces nickel by-products that are further refined into various nickel products at Umicore Cobalt & Specialty Materials.
For more information, please contact preciousmetals@umicore.com.