【USA】Metal Refiners Pause Take-Ins, Delay Payments

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Editor’s Note

This article highlights a significant disruption in the precious metals market, where record prices have led to a surge in trade-ins, overwhelming major refiners like Metalor and causing them to temporarily halt shipments and payments.

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Refiners Halt Shipments and Payments

Gold and silver refiners are delaying payments and limiting purchases as they cope with an unprecedented surge of metal trade-ins spurred by record gold and silver prices.

On Jan. 26, one of the world’s biggest refiners, Metalor, told U.S. customers that it would not accept new shipments for the next five to 10 business days, and that it was pausing outgoing payments due to a “constrained lending environment,” according to a letter posted by others on social media.

The company didn’t respond to inquiries from JCK, but told Bloomberg that this week’s snowstorm damaged its refinery in North Attleboro, Mass., which had already been coping with “production constraints.”

Industry-Wide Strain

Other refiners are similarly feeling the pinch.

United Precious Metal Refining (UPM), which primarily works with the jewelry industry, says it’s servicing current customers but can’t take on new ones.

“It’s a real mess,” Dave Siminski, UPM’s vice president of sales and marketing, tells JCK. “Basically, everyone is putting on the brakes. Things are on semi-pause until we figure it all out.”

The problem has been caused by the rapidly increasing prices of both silver and gold, which have led to a huge number of people seeking cash for gold. Refiners say the present situation is different from the early 2010s, when there was also a big surge in trade-ins. U.S. refining capacity has shrunk dramatically since then, as two major refiners, Republic Metals and Ohio Precious Metals, closed amid scandals in 2019.

“The refiners are the choke point,” says David Emslie, owner of Prospector’s Gold & Gems, a refiner based in Fort Collins, Colo. “But you don’t have a whole lot in the U.S. [Every consumer] has something tucked away somewhere. There are 330 million people in America. So you have millions of people selling [their old jewelry] to thousands of buyers, who are selling to dozens of refineries. It’s like putting a reservoir through a garden hose. You have more metal than money.”
Capacity and Financial Constraints

Why don’t refiners just expand? That’s not so easy, explains Siminski.

“You need space and you have to buy equipment,” he says. “You have to get more employees, you have to buy a building, you need equipment permits, you have to train people—there’s a learning curve.”

According to Zacharie Aviles, a business development manager for Kitco Metals, things started getting bad for the refineries in October, when silver hit $50 an ounce for the first time since 1980, leading some investors with large silver holdings to decide it was time to cash in.

“Once silver hit $50, it became high-risk,” Aviles says. (Kitco still buys gold, but not silver.) “There’s only a certain capacity to refine silver in the United States. Everyone got clogged up. It will probably take six to eight months for everything to clear.”

As a result of the price rise, refiners halted silver purchases, though some have resumed them. At the same time, gold was setting records, and the daily headlines about its soaring price caused consumers to rush to their jewelers to trade in old unused items.

While refiners could theoretically buy the metal and build a stockpile, their business doesn’t work that way. Most refiners borrow money from banks to fund their purchases. They recoup the initial outlay after they melt down the scrap and sell it. That doesn’t work when there’s a backlog. The refiners have to keep paying interest on the bank loans, which eats into their slim profit margins.

“Refining is all about finance,” says Siminski. “The bank gives up money to pay [people trading in metals]. We were usually able to process metals in 14 days. But there was so much of it, it was taking 60 to 90 days. So we don’t get paid right away, while we’re still paying interest.”

Emslie says the interest costs mean refiners “are spending money to lose money—which is asinine.”

On top of that, when a huge volume of product comes in, at a historically high price, refiners can easily exceed their credit limits. That creates a cash flow issue.

“We are buying three times the amount of gold we were a year ago, at double the price,” says Torry Hoover, president of Hoover & Strong, a Chesterfield, Va.–based refiner and manufacturer. “You are going to chew up your line of credit or cash pretty fast. We used to pay within 48 hours. Now, if we can pay out within two weeks, we are happy.”

Banks aren’t necessarily willing to provide extra financing, given that metals markets have proved extremely volatile—such as this week, when gold hit $5,500 on Wednesday, only to suddenly reverse course. It’s now trading at just over $4,700.

Calls for Patience and a Long-Term View

The refiners JCK spoke to believe the current metal madness won’t last forever, as shown by this week’s significant reversal of fortune. They will be happy when things calm down.

“With the price going up, people think refiners are making all this extra money,” Siminski says. “But when you consider the carrying costs, the interest, the stress level it’s putting on our people, on the industry, and our customers, and then people put out bad information, it creates a panic.”

Until the markets settle down, the refiners all have the same message to jewelers who are used to getting quick money for scrap: Keep cool. The pauses are just that, and they will end eventually.

“There’s been a lot of rumors that refiners are running out of money,” says Emslie. “That’s not accurate. This is a liquidity issue, so putting a pause allows everyone to catch up. Jewelers should look at this like the week before Christmas: You may be behind, and you have to get caught up and turn people away. But it will clear up.”

Hoover agrees:

“I don’t see this as long-term. The markets will settle down, hopefully.”

For the time being, he asks jewelers to keep calm.

“You have to be patient,” he says. “These are extraordinary times. This is history.”
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⏰ Published on: January 30, 2026