Melting

Melting is the first step for almost everything that arrives at our Sharjah facility. We melt gold and silver using electric induction furnaces, turning mixed scrap and irregular material into a single homogeneous batch that can be sampled, assayed and valued accurately — something that isn’t possible while the metal is still jewellery, filings or casting waste.

Accepted forms

• Scrap jewellery — broken, outdated or unsellable pieces, any karat
• Casting returns — sprues, buttons and runners left over from casting production
• Bench sweeps — floor sweepings, polishing dust and filings from a jeweller’s workbench, which typically carry the lowest and most variable gold content of the three

What happens to your metal

Material is weighed on intake, melted in the induction furnace, and poured into a homogeneous bar or ingot. A sample is drawn from that pour — not from the original scrap — so the assay that follows measures the batch actually being valued, not an estimate of what went in. From there the metal is either refined to bar-grade fineness or returned to the client, depending on what was agreed.

Losses

Every melt involves some loss: a small amount of metal stays with the crucible and slag, and anything that isn’t metal burns off. Induction heating keeps that loss minimal. How much is lost depends on the material — clean scrap jewellery loses very little, while bench sweeps carry dust, abrasive and organic matter that burns away and can account for a noticeable share of the intake weight. That is why the metal is weighed before and after the melt, and why the assay is taken from the bar rather than from the scrap.

What you receive

• An intake weight, recorded when the material arrives
• A melted weight for the homogeneous bar or ingot after the pour
• An assay result on a sample drawn from that bar, issued within 24 hours
• The metal itself — returned as a bar, or forwarded to refining if bar-grade fineness was agreed

Turnaround

Each bar takes 15 to 20 minutes to melt, pour and quench, and a batch holds up to 12.5kg, so a lot of several batches can be melted, poured and sampled within a working day. The assay result follows within 24 hours.

Why induction melting

Induction furnaces heat the metal directly through electromagnetic induction rather than external combustion, which gives tighter temperature control, faster cycle times, and lower material loss than gas-fired alternatives — a direct benefit to the client when the batch being melted is theirs.