Our Gold
Where our gold comes from has changed more than almost anything else in our workshop. This is the honest story of that journey — from alloying our own recycled metal because nothing better existed, to traceable Australian-mined gold refined with reduced hazardous chemicals.
Traceable, Australian-mined, responsibly refined
Today, our gold is supplied, refined and cast by Palloys — the jewellery arm of Pallion, Australasia's largest precious-metals group. Through Pallion's ABC Refinery, our gold can be traced directly to Australian mines and refined here in Australia, under some of the strongest environmental and labour laws in the world.
We moved to predominantly Australian-mined gold in 2021, after fifteen years working almost entirely in recycled metal. We still use recycled gold in measured proportion — but well-regulated Australian mining, refined without hazardous chemicals, is now the most defensible choice we can make, and it keeps our supply chain short, local and verifiable.
Freshly poured gold ingotsTwenty years of narrowing the gap
When we started in 2005, the options a small Australian studio had for responsible gold were thin. So we built our own way forward, and kept changing it as better choices appeared. Here is how that has unfolded.
No Australian supplier offered certified responsible gold to a small studio, so we worked almost entirely in recycled precious metal — at times alloying our own from recycled stock. It was the most defensible choice on the table.
We began sourcing certified recycled gold, platinum and silver from Hoover & Strong in the United States. Their Harmony metals, launched that year, were 100% recycled and independently certified by SCS Global Systems, refined in one of the greenest facilities in the country.
Shipping metal around the world carried its own carbon cost, so we kept looking closer to home. In 2011, Chemgold in Australia agreed to produce 100% recycled metal for us. The partnership was excellent — world-class work from a top Australian business — and we still work with Chemgold from time to time today.
For the next decade we worked mainly in recycled metal, alongside some Fairtrade gold mined in Peru — a certification that channels fairer prices and a community premium directly to small-scale mining communities.
Our biggest change since starting the business. With traceable, responsibly refined Australian gold now available, we moved from recycled to predominantly Australian-mined metal — for the reasons set out above and below.
From mine to market, in Australia
We buy our gold and have our casting completed by Palloys, the jewellery division of Pallion — Australasia's largest precious-metals group, in the industry since 1951. Pallion brings together ABC Bullion, ABC Refinery, Palloys and others under one vertically integrated, traceable supply chain.
All of Palloys' metal and refining is carried out by ABC Refinery — the largest independent precious-metal refinery in Australasia, and Australia's only independent refinery accredited by the LBMA, the Shanghai Gold Exchange and COMEX, backed by Australia's only NATA-accredited refining laboratory. In 2019, Palloys became the first Australian jewellery manufacturer certified by the Responsible Jewellery Council.
Refined with heat and air, not harsh chemicals
Refining gold has traditionally been a chemical-intensive process. ABC Refinery, which refines all of our metal, has invested in cleaner methods — most notably acidless separation, which it was the first major refinery in the world to install.
ABC refineryAcidless separation (ALS)
Instead of the chlorine-gas process used across the industry for over a century, ALS purifies gold using vacuum distillation — heat and air pressure rather than hazardous chemicals — reaching 99.5% purity with zero chemical emissions, and making the process far safer for workers and the environment.
The world's largest zero-emission capacity
ABC Refinery was the first major refinery in the world to install acidless separation, and operates the world's largest acidless, zero-emission refining capacity — alongside emission abatement and waste-water treatment and recycling across the facility.
Nothing to landfill
Residual material is processed by pyrolytic incineration rather than sent to landfill, recovering and re-refining every trace of precious metal so little is wasted.
Measured and reported
Pallion documents its environmental and social performance each year in its Considerate Precious Metals report, prepared using Global Reporting Initiative methodology — so the claims are measured, not just stated.
Honest sourcing, not perfect-sounding claims
No single gold choice is without trade-offs, and we won't pretend otherwise. Recycled gold is clean, but it does not reduce the world's mining. Well-regulated Australian mining supports an industry held to high standards — but it is still mining. What we can do is buy traceable metal, refined responsibly, from people we can name, and keep narrowing the gap between what is claimed and what is true.
If something on this page raises a question, we would rather have the conversation than dodge it. Ask us anything about where your gold comes from — we can trace it.
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