A Swiss startup is aiming to address the lack of transparency in global gold trading against the backdrop of investors’ increasing expectations around sustainability.

Gold certification has so far had little success in bringing about sustainable growth in the sector mainly because the industrial mining conglomerates, which account for 80 percent of the market, have traceability and large mining volumes as the focus of their sustainability strategy.

This approach excludes 90 percent of those working in the sector who are engaged in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM).

Lack of Scalability

Certification in the ASM sector lacks scalability due to comprehensive procurement criteria as well as the ineffectiveness of traditional auditing processes, entrepreneur Anouk Hilti-Zingg told finews.com, adding that the result was that the market for sustainable gold had not been able to generate a scalable social and ecological impact.

Starting from this premise, she and fellow entrepreneur Nathalie Widmer founded Assarée just a year and a half ago. The Zurich-based company says it offers an alternative to both traditional and certified gold investments. Hilti-Zingg said Assarée’s goal was to establish complete transparency and an economically viable impact strategy in the ASM market.

Switzerland’s Key Role

Switzerland also played a major role in international gold trading because a large part of the world’s gold was refined there, Hilti-Zingg and Widmer said. This meant Switzerland bore particular responsibility for social and economic conditions in gold-producing countries.

Together with a Geneva-based consultancy on impact and compliance as well as a Swiss refinery, Assarée has built up a value chain which involves just three stages from mine to market:

• ASM

• Local processing plant

• Swiss Refinery

All those involved play a central role in combining ASM with industrial gold processing. In Assarée’s value chain, artisan miners work closely with an industrial gold processing plant, resulting in a considerable reduction in water and energy consumption.

Creating Real Incentives

In addition, this process stops the use of mercury, a significant environmental benefit because 40 precent of global mercury pollution comes from unregulated gold mining.

«The production process defined by Assarée creates real incentives to reward artisan miners fairly and transparently and over time to significantly reduce the environmental footprint of mine-related activity within the framework of process optimization,» Hilti-Zingg said.

Alternative for Ethical Investors

The fact that on average just 24 grams of gold are produced from a tonne of ore illustrates the problem of the negative external impact of traditional gold mining.

Assarée offers an alternative for ethical investors on the lookout for an innovative physical gold product. Assarée’s focus covers all three ESG criteria and is pursuing the greater goal of bringing about environmentally positive mining.

Step-by-Step Approach

The company’s step-by-step and targeted approach to impact was intended to give its clients a transparent insight into the continuous positive changes along Assarée’s value chain encompassing all the partners involved.

«It’s about creating an awareness of how the realities on the ground in the gold’s countries of origin are closely tied to the end product, Assarée Gold Investment,» Hilti-Zingg said.