A sustainable « urban mining » process
Precious metals undergo a wide range of different processes during the fabrication of jewellery and watches, in dental technology and in modern industrial applications. If you have precious metals scraps, waste materials and organic products from your manufacturing processes that need to be recycled, at C.HAFNER & HILDERBRAND you can hand in all of them for refining. With state-of-the-art technologies and top processing speeds, we stand for sustainable precious metal recycling and support the preservation of the cycle through “urban mining”.
Identification & Verification
We first need to identify you as a customer. Once done, we will create your metal account and you can securely submit your material for refining after the verification of the legal origin of the precious metals which are handed over to us for processing.
Read more about our conditions for identification and verification here!
Precious Metal content analysis
Refining of precious metals is a multi stages process of separation and purification of Gold, Silver, Palladium and Platinum metals from scraps and sweepings. To ensure prestigious sampling of refinery scraps, residues are homogenized through melting and cast into clean, homogenous ingots. Sweepings, as low-grade precious metal-containing residues, are homogenised through ashing in order to extract the precious metals for sampling.
Refining Process
The refining in itself is performed at our modern C.HAFNER refinery facility in Germany. Using chemical and physical technologies, we recycle the precious metals. We completely detach the materials and separate the precious metals (gold, silver, platinum and palladium) in the required pure form by means of precipitation, reduction or electrolysis. For gold, the old material is melted down and processed into fine gold through a chemical process. The fine gold obtained from the refining is then further processed into precious metal products such as semi-finished products, ingots and other preliminary products before going on sale.
Ethical & Ecological refining
C.HAFNER has been recycling for over 165 years, combining high levels of experience and expertise with maximum efficiency in terms of its process technology. As LBMA and quality certified, C.HAFNER is committed to actively reducing CO₂ emissions and passionate about protecting the environment through the use of state-of-the-art technology and is proud to establish itself as the world first refinery with a CO₂-neutral refining process for gold. This is your guarantee that your precious metals have undergone ethical and ecological processes that comply with all current regulation laws and highest standards.
