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Gold miners are being urged to identify the refiners receiving metal from each operating mine under a World Gold Council disclosure framework aimed at making legitimate gold flows easier to distinguish from illicit trade.
Companies producing doré, the partly refined gold-and-silver bars poured at mine sites, should publish an annual list linking each mine to its refining partners and their countries, under the London-based Council’s new disclosure guidance.
“It gives downstream partners, investors, regulators and other stakeholders more confidence in the integrity of the market while making it harder for opaque or irresponsible practices to hide in complexity,” WGC head of supply chain integrity Vivien Glass wrote in a commentary this week announcing the board’s adoption of the guidance.
The framework follows a September 2023 commitment by council members to disclose their refining partners. The latest step sets out a common reporting format, with exclusions for commercial and security information. It recommends disclosure across the doré-producing industry rather than establishing a legal reporting requirement.
Provenance concerns
The stakes were highlighted by New York Times investigations into Latin American gold entering North American supply chains. The Royal Canadian Mint pledged to expand sourcing disclosures in April after the newspaper found that some gold it refined may have come from Colombian cartel-controlled mines. The Mint said it had suspended refining material from the supply chain in question.
More recently, Venezuelan doré shipped to the U.S. under a Trafigura agreement with state-owned miner Minerven remained in storage because refiners were unwilling to handle it, the Times reported in September. Trafigura disputed the account on several points in comments to The Northern Miner.
Those cases underscore the distinction between identifying a metal’s source and establishing that it hasn’t financed criminal activity. The council’s framework would make mine-to-refiner relationships public, but the disclosures alone wouldn’t establish that gold was responsibly sourced.
Mine to refiner
The annual disclosure should identify each mine, its state and country, the refiner receiving its doré and the refiner’s country. Every recipient should be listed when a mine uses more than one refiner, the council said.
Members using toll processing should also disclose the mine-to-refiner relationship when they retain legal custody of the gold until export. Companies can include the information in annual or sustainability reports, or an equivalent publication.
The guidance recommends annual disclosure covering the preceding 12 months, but doesn’t specify the first reporting year or a publication deadline. A council spokesperson didn’t immediately reply to an email on Friday seeking clarification.
Shipment weights aren’t required. Transport companies, routes, traders and exporters can also remain undisclosed, along with other sensitive commercial details or information that could jeopardize workers’ safety.
The guidance excludes gold shipped as concentrate, carbon fines or low-grade sweepings. Those materials don’t typically go directly to a refinery, and naming their recipients could raise confidentiality or security concerns, the Council said.
Earlier pledge
The Council’s 2023 pledge covered 33 members with operating mines that collectively produced about 1,300 tonnes of gold annually. They committed to naming refining partners at least once a year for operations whose primary revenue came from gold production.
Members also pledged to join the Gold Bar Integrity platform and confidentially supply production data to refining partners. The new guidance doesn’t specify penalties for failing to disclose.
Pressure for broader transparency also extends to refiners. In a September 2025 submission on the London Bullion Market Association’s proposed disclosure changes, Human Rights Watch urged the association to require refiners to identify all mines of origin and suppliers, including those outside the council’s membership and suppliers of recycled gold.
Public supplier information can help affected communities, investors and other stakeholders respond when abuses occur, the rights group said.