Ketan B Kothari, Director, Augmont Gold, explains about the company’s well-integrated refining to retailing solutions related to the gold ecosystem. He also expresses concerns about import of gold dore and policy changes that will help India become a refining hub.
Tell us more about Augmont Gold For All.
Augmont is a leading state-of-the-art gold refinery in India with annual sales surpassing US$ 2 billion. It is also the leading creator and redeemer of gold exchange traded fund (ETF) units in India for all gold ETF schemes, and delivery provider of gold on commodity exchanges in India. It has a network of over 4,000 jewellers connected online on the SPOT system and 23 B2B delivery centres across India.
The company is a one-stop destination for everything related to gold. It operates a tech platform through which customers can buy gold, sell gold, store gold (in insured and secured vaults), take delivery at doorstep or convert into jewellery online or at thousands of jewellers across India.
Augmont Gold For All is India’s largest completely integrated gold ecosystem encompassing refining to retailing. While almost all the gold that is mined in India is refined by us, we also import gold dorè bars from across the world and produce the finest quality bars and coins.
The gold, silver bars and coins that we produce are sold online through the award-winning, world’s biggest physical SPOT (Spot Precious-metals Online Trading) Platform. Augmont’s SPOT prices are India’s benchmark prices in the jewellers professional market since its inception in 2008.
Augmont Gold For All is among the top 100 companies in India (as per Dun & Bradstreet), and the SPOT platform has been awarded as the best platform year-on-year. For more information on the products on offer by Augmont, readers can visit: www.augmont.com
Is there a bright future for the gold refining sector in India? Is the Government taking any steps to boost gold refining in India?
Gold refineries are central to any development of the gem and jewellery industry. The Government is proactively working on various policy changes and efforts are put in to make gold a financial asset. These include:
• Setting up of gold exchanges in domestic and GIFT city. • Revamped GMS scheme with efforts on awareness and use of technology. • India Good Delivery on exchanges, for settlement of GML, etc. • Compulsory Hallmarking and UID
To meet this vision, Indian refineries are also putting in efforts. However, the current import norms of dore bars are not conductive to import them from large mines across the world. Globally, these large mines have long term contracts with other established LBMA refineries in countries like Switzerland. Hence, Indian refineries are dependent on artisanal and small mines to import dore bars. However, this carries financial and purity risks.