Rand Refinery is South Africa's principal gold and silver refiner, incorporated in 1920 and headquartered in Germiston, Gauteng, and as of September 2026 it does not appear on the LPPM Good Delivery list for platinum or palladium alongside the country's three mining-company refiners. It casts gold and silver to Good Delivery specification, while its Wet Chemical Refining Plant recovers platinum and palladium only as an intermediate concentrate that leaves the site for separation elsewhere. What follows sets out that refining role, Rand Refinery's accreditation status, its ownership and its product range, alongside the other accredited platinum group metal refiners DailyPlatinum tracks.
What Is Rand Refinery?#
Rand Refinery is a privately held, unlisted gold and silver refining company, incorporated in 1920 and domiciled in South Africa, according to Wikipedia's entry on the company, cross-checked against Rand Refinery's own site. Its plant sits in Germiston, Gauteng, near the Witwatersrand mining belt whose gold output the refinery was built to process.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1920 |
| Headquarters | Germiston, Gauteng, South Africa |
| Legal domicile | South Africa |
| Stock listing | Not publicly listed |
| Core business | Gold and silver refining, with platinum and palladium by-product recovery |
Rand Refinery carries no ticker symbol and publishes no share price, because it is not a publicly traded entity. Its ownership sits with a consortium of South African gold miners rather than public shareholders, a structure covered in full below.
Rand Refinery's PGM Refining Capability#
Rand Refinery recovers platinum and palladium only as an intermediate by-product of its gold and silver processing, not as a finished, separately assayed platinum group metal product. The refinery's smelter, established in 1966, and its Wet Chemical Refining Plant treat mine by-products to recover gold, silver, platinum and palladium together, but the platinum and palladium leave the plant as concentrate or precipitate rather than as a Good Delivery bar. That output is precious-metal-bearing material, not the nickel and copper streams a dedicated base metal refinery recovers from PGM matte upstream of any precious-metal separation step.
Rand Refinery's own customer-service guidance directs platinum and palladium refining enquiries to Impala Refining Services, according to Rand Refinery's Services page. That routing is the clearest operational statement of where its PGM role stops: the company smelts and partially refines the by-product stream, then hands the platinum and palladium content to an accredited PGM refiner for final separation and assay.
| Step | Rand Refinery's role | Where the PGM content goes |
|---|---|---|
| Feed intake | Mine by-products bearing gold, silver, platinum and palladium | Smelted from 1966 onward |
| Precious-metal recovery | Wet Chemical Refining Plant recovers Au, Ag, Pt and Pd | Gold and silver reach Good Delivery bar form on site |
| Platinum and palladium | Recovered only as concentrate or precipitate | Forwarded to Impala Refining Services for separation |
An accredited platinum or palladium refiner must demonstrate a five-figure assay of at least 99.95% purity to the London Platinum and Palladium Market's satisfaction, and must show a minimum tangible net worth of £15 million and at least 500 kg of annual refined output in the metal applied for, per the LPPM Good Delivery Rules, June 2020 edition. Rand Refinery does not carry out that final assay step for platinum or palladium itself, and its own accreditation does not extend to meeting those platinum and palladium thresholds.
Rand Refinery and LPPM/LBMA Accreditation#
Rand Refinery holds no LPPM Good Delivery or sponge accreditation for platinum, palladium or rhodium. Its accreditation runs on the gold and silver side of the London market system instead.
| Accreditation | Rand Refinery status |
|---|---|
| LPPM Good Delivery, platinum | Not listed |
| LPPM Good Delivery, palladium | Not listed |
| LPPM rhodium sponge | Not listed |
| LBMA Good Delivery Referee | Listed, one of five referees |
Only three South African mining-company refineries hold LPPM Good Delivery status for platinum and palladium: Rustenburg Platinum Mines Limited (Valterra Platinum), Impala Platinum Limited and Western Platinum (Pty) Limited, part of Sibanye-Stillwater. A fourth South African entity, Heraeus PGM SA (Pty) Ltd, also appears on the lists, but it is a subsidiary of the German Heraeus Group, a refining and technology company, not a mining company. Rand Refinery is not among any of the four.
Rand Refinery is instead one of five LBMA-accredited Good Delivery Referees, according to Rand Refinery's Services page, a gold and silver market role in which referee laboratories independently verify, by spectrographic analysis, the assay of bars submitted by applicant refiners seeking Good Delivery listing. That referee role sits entirely within the gold and silver accreditation system and does not carry over to platinum or palladium; the LPPM operates its own, separate referee system for platinum and palladium Good Delivery, using its own panel of referees, and Rand Refinery does not sit on that panel.
The distinction matters because referee status and Good Delivery listing are not the same accreditation. A Good Delivery listing lets a refiner cast bars the market accepts on trust; referee status is a further, smaller role held by only a handful of laboratories that check other refiners' assay work. Rand Refinery holds the referee role for gold and silver, a mark of assay credibility in that market, without holding any accreditation at all in the separate platinum and palladium system.
Ownership and Corporate Structure#
Rand Refinery operates as a private, unlisted consortium refinery rather than a publicly traded company, with no share price or stock ticker for investors to track. Its capital was originally raised in 1920 from Chamber of Mines member gold-mining companies, according to Wikipedia's entry on the company, cross-checked against Rand Refinery's own site. Its current owners are reported as AngloGold Ashanti, Harmony Gold, Sibanye-Stillwater, DRDGOLD and Gold Fields, the same source states, though individual shareholding percentages among the five are not published.
That consortium structure explains why questions about a Rand Refinery "share price" or "stock" have no answer: the company is not separately listed, and its five owner-companies each carry their own, independent stock listings and results. DailyPlatinum does not track those owners' share prices on this page; see the border note below for what this page does and does not cover.
PGM Products and Commercial Forms#
Rand Refinery's own finished products are gold and silver bars refined to Good Delivery specification; platinum and palladium never reach a finished, Rand Refinery-branded product form. The refinery casts and markets gold and silver in bar form on the strength of its LBMA Good Delivery accreditation, while any platinum and palladium content it recovers leaves the site as concentrate or precipitate rather than as a retail or industrial PGM product.
| Product form | Metal | Status at Rand Refinery |
|---|---|---|
| Good Delivery bar | Gold | Rand Refinery's own accredited, finished product |
| Good Delivery bar | Silver | Rand Refinery's own accredited, finished product |
| Concentrate or precipitate | Platinum, palladium | Intermediate by-product only, forwarded to Impala Refining Services |
Where Rand Refinery Coverage Stops on DailyPlatinum#
DailyPlatinum's coverage of Rand Refinery is limited to its refining capability, accreditation status and ownership structure. This page is not equity research, and DailyPlatinum does not track Rand Refinery's share price, issue a stock rating or comment on the share prices of its five owner-companies. Because most search interest in Rand Refinery concerns its own-brand gold bars, this page also does not cover gold-bar authentication, grading or "is my bar fake" questions; readers with those questions should consult a bullion dealer or Rand Refinery directly. For accreditation and refining facts across the wider industry, see DailyPlatinum's directory of accredited platinum group metal refiners.
Other Accredited PGM Refiners#
South Africa's platinum and palladium Good Delivery accreditation sits with a small, named group of refiners, distinct from Rand Refinery:
- Rustenburg Platinum Mines Limited (Valterra Platinum)
- Impala Platinum Limited
- Western Platinum (Pty) Limited (Sibanye-Stillwater)
- Heraeus PGM SA (Pty) Ltd (a South Africa-domiciled Heraeus Group subsidiary, not a miner)
Dedicated profile pages for these and other accredited refiners sit within DailyPlatinum's own refiner directory.
Frequently Asked Questions#
Who are the owners of Rand Refinery? Rand Refinery's reported owners are AngloGold Ashanti, Harmony Gold, Sibanye-Stillwater, DRDGOLD and Gold Fields, a consortium structure dating to its 1920 founding by Chamber of Mines member companies. Individual shareholding percentages are not published.
What do they do at Rand Refinery? Rand Refinery smelts and refines gold and silver to Good Delivery specification and recovers platinum and palladium from the same mine by-products as an intermediate concentrate, which it forwards to Impala Refining Services rather than refining to a finished PGM product itself.