Our Journals: Single Mine Origin Gold
Single Mine Origin Gold
Join us in conversation with Charlie Betts, the co-founder of Single Mine Origin, as he shares with us the importance of sourcing gold responsibly.
Can you introduce yourself to our community and tell us a bit about what SMO is and its origins?
I’m Charlie Betts, the Managing Director of The Betts Group, which is the UK’s oldest precious metal refining and manufacturing business, dating back to 1760. I’m also the co-founder, along with my brother Dan, of Single Mine Origin. Single Mine Origin was established in 2017 as a joint venture between the Betts Group and Hummingbird Resources (a gold exploration and mining business established by my brother). From my perspective, I had seen a growing desire in the jewellery industry for responsibly sourced gold, but there were not many
options available to jewellers in this space that were both affordable and easily accessible. From Dan’s perspective, he had witnessed firsthand that if corporate gold mining is done responsibly, it can be impactful and have a hugely positive effect in local communities around gold mines. We realised that between our mining and refining businesses, we had complete oversight of the gold supply chain and so decided to launch SMO. The three core principles of SMO are traceability (ensuring that we know exactly which mine our gold comes from and that it remains entirely segregated through the supply chain), Responsibility (that our partner mines operate responsibly and progressively and have a positive impact on their host communities) and transparency (that our partner mines openly share factual data about their impacts, such as carbon emissions and social investment).
How does SMO decide which mines they'd like to work with?
A great deal of work goes into selecting which mines SMO partners with for gold supply. There are certain criteria that must be in place for us to consider a mine. In particular, it needs to be practically possible to keep their gold separate through the supply chain, so the mine needs to be working with an LBMA refiner who is happy for us to segregate that mine’s gold and send in auditors to ensure this segregation is taking place. Secondly, they need to be conforming to an internationally recognised responsibility standard (such as IRMA or the RGMPs), which involves independence assurance. Beyond that, we have a detailed evaluation process looking at the impacts a mine is having. No mine is perfect, so we aim to source from a range of mines based on their different impacts. Some mines have a fantastic social impact, improving healthcare and educational outcomes in local communities, whereas other mines might be particularly strong environmentally, reducing their carbon emissions or working on increasing biodiversity.
What defines responsibly sourced gold?
Responsible sourcing can be defined in many ways, but it always involved understanding and scrutinising the source of your gold. At SMO we don’t really want to be the judge and jury of what constitutes a ‘responsible’ mine, which is why we insist that our mines are signed up to an internationally recognised responsibility standard (such as the Responsible Gold Mining Principles, IRMA or the ICMM standard). These standards are independently assured and cover a wide range of areas such as closure planning, compliance with the international cyanide management code, health and safety, governance and local employment.
Are there advantages of using SMO instead of recycled gold?
Our family business has been recycling gold for over 250 years, so I am in no way against recycling. However, there are clear limitations and risks associated with recycled gold. It is also true that using recycled gold does not impact the amount of gold mined each year (because gold is essentially money). For me, it is more important to address and improve how gold is being mined, because that accounts for 70% of the gold supply and the gold mined today is the recycled gold of tomorrow. With SMO gold, customers have absolute knowledge about the provenance of their metal and can scrutinise the associated impacts.
Can you tell us how the tracing process works and why this information is important?
We use a robust chain of custody whereby we record multiple date points along the supply chain. This includes export dockets, airline bills, receipts into and out of LBMA refineries and other data. Importantly, we also always send in independent auditors to verify and document that each batch of SMO gold has been refined in segregation from any other material at the LBMA refinery. We supply QR codes with our gold, so that customers and end consumers can see exactly where their gold came from. We also have a trace tool on the SMO website whereby customers can access the full documentary chain of custody information about each batch of gold. The whole chain of custody is also externally audited. We believe it is important to have a thoroughly robust, segregated chain of custody in order to maintain absolute confidence in our product.
What encouraged you to start a company such as SMO gold?
It was a combination of seeing a gap in the market which we knew we were able to fill, so a financial opportunity in one sense which could give us a competitive advantage over other metal suppliers, but also seeing the opportunity to drive industry-wide change in a positive way. By creating demand for responsibility sourced metal in both the jewellery and investment sector, we are essentially creating competition within the gold mining sector to be the ‘best’ operator from an ESG perspective. SMO is also a powerful tool for our mining partners because it showcases their work and raises public awareness in a way that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.
How would you like the gold industry to progress in the future?
I would simply like consumers and jewellers to become increasingly engaged with the provenance of their materials. I think that engagement will ultimately be what drive positive change across the industry in a variety of ways. Of course we’d like more people to use SMO gold, but actually I am really happy to see other responsibly sourced products such as Fairtrade, Fair Mined, and ‘known provenance’ recycled metals succeed. Ultimately, I’d just like to see an end of the status quo whereby most jewellers are simply not engaged at all with where their metal has come from.
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