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China is now in pole position as regards annual global gold mining output.
Much if not all of Chinese domestic gold mining output is refined into standard
gold by Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) approved refiners and then and sold
through the SGE. A lot of recycled gold in China also flows through the
same refineries. As of 2013,
there were at
least 35 refiners across China accredited by the SGE to
deliver gold ‘Ingots’ (bars of weights 12.5 kg, 3 kg and 1 kg) on the
Exchange. The list is probably longer now, and although the sheer scale of
the Chinese gold refining sector is hard to keep track of, you get the
picture as to its size.
It was therefore surprising that recently, while working on a particular
task that required images of gold bars produced by Chinese
refiners, I found that the selection of Chinese branded gold bar images
on ‘the web’ (i.e. Google.com) seemed extremely limited. As it turns
out, there are many many images of Chinese brand gold bars, you just need to
know how and where to look. Nearly all of these images have never been seen
before in “Western search engines”.
The ‘limited results’ Approach
Some of the large Chinese gold refineries are owned by, or
affiliated with, large Chinese gold mining companies. My first approach was
to first determine the largest gold mining companies in China:
- China
National Gold Group Corporation, also known as China Gold
or CNG. CNG’s major gold mining asset is Zhongjin Gold. CNG
also has a 39% stake in “China Gold International Resources Corporation”
which is basically its international arm (it also mines gold in China).
The 3 next biggest Chinese gold mining companies are as follows. I’m not
sure about how they rank in terms of positions 2-4, but probably in this
order:
Using the names of these gold mining companies, we can see
which of them refine their own bars. Taking a look at some of the main
Chinese gold refineries reveals the following refining companies are owned by
the miners, so its looks like they all refine their own gold bars, as would
be expected:
- Zhongyuan Gold Smelter of Zhongjin GoldCorporation,SanmenxiaCity
[owned by China Gold Corp]
- Zijin Mining Group Company, Shanghang
- Shandong Gold Mining Company, Laizhou City
- Shandong Zhaojin Gold and Silver Refinery
Company, Zhaoyuan City
There are 9 Chinese gold refineries accredited to the
London Bullion Market Association’s (LBMA) Good Delivery List for gold. This
list, which is analogous to an A-List, includes gold refiners around the
world which produce large gold bars (400 oz), and whose production meets the
very high quality standards laid down by the LBMA. Only Japan, with 11 gold
refineries on the LBMA list, has a higher number than China. Russia has 8 of
its gold refineries on the LBMA list.
The above refineries of Zhongyuan, Zijin, Shandong Gold,
and Shandong Zhaojin are on this LBMA Good Delivery list. With 4 accredited
refineries on the LBMA list, one might think that photos / images of
the gold bars of these refineries are easy to find. Next step is to see
if any images of these refiners’ gold bars are available “on the web”. The
short answer is that a few images are available, but they seem to be very
rare and not saved very widely.
1. Zhongyuan Gold Smelter
LBMA bar mark description – “Current Bar Mark:Circular
logo round Chinese character with CHN GOLD below.“
The above image is taken from page 10 of a Gold Bars
Worldwide brochure here,
which is titled “Shanghai Good Delivery Gold Ingots and Bars”, published
by Grendon International Research Pty Ltd, in November 2014.
(Notice the bar mark in the image says CHNGOLD and SGE).
2. Zijin Mining Group Company
LBMA bar mark description – “Current Bar Mark:Double
crescent logo with ZIJIN MINING in Roman and Chinese characters. Circular
assay mark with ZIJIN MINING in Roman and Chinese characters.“
This is a ZIJIN ‘double cresent’ bar. Notice the SGE
marking. Again, the image is taken from page 10 of the same GoldBars
Worldwide brochure here,
as it only seemed to be found there. The photographs in this brochure
were actually supplied to Grendon by the refineries. ps: Page 6 of this
brochure has a list of Chinese gold refineries which was sourced from the
2013 SGE annual report (Chinese version).
Note: if you look in the pdf in the link, the GoldBars
Worldwide brochure actually labels this bar image as a Henan Zhongyuan bar
which looks wrong. But the double crescent shows that it’s actually a ZIJIN
bar, as per another Zijin bar on page 9 of the same brochure.
3. Shandong Gold Mining Company
LBMA bar mark description – “Current Bar Mark:Circle surrounded by
TAISHAN in Roman and Chinese characters within a square comprising four
stylised S’s.”
Conveniently, a Shandong Gold bar is on the BullionStar
site here, which Koos Jansen used to illustrate SGE bar markings.
Notice the circle, the SGE marking, and the ‘Taishan’
marking in the above image.
4. Shandong Zhaojin Gold
LBMA bar mark description - “Current Bar Mark:Triangle
with two interlocking half circles and ZHAOJIN in Chinese characters within
the triangle.”
The only images I could find of Shandong Zhaojin bar were
these ones, from the Shandong Zhaojin Import and Export Co Ltd website:
Notice the SGE markings. Notice also the Shandong Zhaojin
bar logo is the same as the Shandong Zhaojin company logo:
Does Shandong Zhaojin Import and Export Co Ltd export
gold? On its website, its claims to export gold, although I find this
surprising due to China’s strict gold export rules. Perhaps they mean gold
exports as part of the processing trade gold exports.
In conclusion, the above search exercise led to the
conclusion that Chinese gold bar photos are very hard to find…at least on
English-speaking internet sites.
The ‘Motherlode’ Approach
The very limited search results above suggested a
different approach was needed. Like a lot of people, I’d heard about the
Google Chinese site http://www.google.cn,
and its re-consolidation to operate from http://www.google.com.hk a few years ago.
I had also vaguely heard of Baidu.com,
the Chinese search engine, but had never had the need to use it.
I consulted with Koos Jansen here at BullionStar.
Koos advised the following approach: “Get the Chinese names of the
refineries, and search Baidu”. Seems pretty obvious in hindsight…
For non-Chinese speakers, like myself, there are 2 ways to
establish the Chinese names of the refineries. The first is to use a
refinery’s website. This works most conveniently with dual-language
websites, and it goes without saying that it only works if the Chinese
refinery (or mining company) actually has a website, which isn’t always the
case. The second approach is to use a Shanghai Gold Exchange list of SGE
members names in English alongside the names in Chinese characters. Such a
list can be seen here.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the results of
using this approach in Baidu are astounding, compared to using Google.com.
There are huge amounts of gold bar image results for the refiners. Here’s a
flavor:
Zhongyuan Gold Smelter – owned by Zhongjin Gold
China Gold aka Zhongjin Gold = 中金黃金
LBMA description – Circular logo round Chinese character
with CHN GOLD below
Zijin Mining
Search in Baidu for “紫金矿业” 金條
LBMA description – Double crescent logo with
ZIJIN MINING in Roman and Chinese characters.
These Zijin Mining gold bar images were sourced from here.
Shandong Gold
Baidu image search for Shandong Gold Group
mostly retrieves gold bars for a brand called SD Gold, which is a
‘Shandong Gold’ bar brand:
To retrieve images for the Shandong Gold Mining Company
bars with the “Taishan” design, you need to search for
Shangdong Gold Mining Company “山东黄金矿业股份有限”
Search Baidu for “山东黄金矿业股份有限” 金條 新寧
This image is sourced from Chinese gold site http://ccne.mofcom.gov.cn, which is a
Ministry of Commerce site called ‘China Commodities’ which looks like a
reseller site, which contains various listings of different gold bars such as
this list.
Shandong Zhaojin
LBMA bar mark description -“Triangle with two interlocking
half circles and ZHAOJIN in Chinese characters within the triangle.”
How does Google Hong Kong perform?
Searches for Zhongyuan Gold (China National Gold),
Zijin Mining, Shandong Gold and Shandong Zhaojin using Google Hong
Kong (English version) bring back very limited bar image results,
mostly images from Gold Bars Worldwide brochures.
The Chinese equivalent name searches in Google Hong Kong
(Chinese language) being back reasonable gold bar image results for each of
the 4 refiners, but not nearly as many as for Baidu. For example, Google HK
Chinese version, finds the below Zhaojin image
in a directory called http://www.zhaojin.cn/imageRepository, which
Google.com draws a blank on.
However, based on this quick overview, it would appear
that Baidu provides the most comprehensive results for gold bar images of
Chinese gold refiners.
With China an increasingly critical part of the world gold
market, its gold bar brands (and photos of said bars) still do not appear to
have registered more than a ripple outside of China. On the surface this is
odd, but it makes sense given that a) China doesn’t generally allow gold bars
to be exported so few outside of China ever see a Chinese gold bar, and b)
the structure of the international search engine market i.e. China
(Baidu) vs non-China (Google). Mote importantly, non-Chinese readers with the
frequent or infrequent need to throw an image of a Chinese gold bar into
their blog posts or tweets now have no excuse to keep recycling the same old
images that are picked up in Google.com search results. With Baidu image
search, the world of Chinese gold bars opens considerably.
Ronan Manly
E-mail Ronan Manly on:
Follow @BullionStar
Follow @ronanmanly
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