Where our metal comes from
Every Liffey Chemicals salt starts as recycled precious metal, refined in Dublin by Liffey Metals. One source, one city, and a record that runs from the scrap that came in the door to the certificate of analysis in your delivery.
One source, refined in Dublin
We do not buy sponge, grain or finished salts from distributors. The silver, gold, palladium and platinum in every product we make is recovered from scrap, jewellery, bullion and business scrap among it, and refined to fine metal by Liffey Metals, our Dublin precious metals refiner. Liffey Chemicals is the chemicals arm of that business. Refined metal crosses a bench, not a border, before it is converted into a salt.
Once refined, recycled metal is chemically indistinguishable from newly mined metal: the refining step takes it to fine metal and the assay confirms it. What recycling changes is the supply chain. Ours is short, local and already tested once before we begin.
Traceability from scrap to certificate
Traceability is usually promised at the end of a supply chain, by whoever sells you the finished product. Ours starts at the beginning, because the beginning is ours too.
- Intake. Every parcel of scrap Liffey Metals receives is opened, weighed and XRF-tested on camera, and the result is recorded against that intake.
- Refining. Intakes are refined to fine metal in Dublin and assayed before any of it is released to the chemicals bench. Each refining batch carries its own reference.
- Conversion. We convert the refined metal into salts in small, controlled batches. Each production batch records the refining batch it was drawn from and becomes a numbered lot.
- Certificate. The lot's certificate of analysis carries that lot number, so it can be followed back through the refining batch to the metal that went into it.
No step passes through a third party, so there is no point at which the provenance of the metal becomes somebody else's word.
Lot-level quality control
Every unit we ship belongs to a numbered lot of the form LC-XXX-YYYY-NNN, printed on the label, the packing slip and your order email. Before a lot is released we assay its metal content, check purity against the published specification for that product and record its appearance. A batch that misses its specification is not released. Lot numbers are also how we answer questions: quote one in any query and we can see what was tested, when, and against which specification.
The results are issued as a certificate of analysis for that lot, not a typical or representative value. The certificate states the result, the specification it was tested against and the retest date, and it can be retrieved at any time by lot number from our Find a CoA page.
Metal content is also the basis of our pricing: the metal in the pack at the live spot price, a published processing multiplier and a fixed pack fee. Prices lock when an order or quotation is created.
What this means for your work
If your quality system asks where the metal in a reagent came from, the answer is short: recycled precious metal, refined in Dublin by Liffey Metals, converted into a salt in Dublin by us, assayed and certified lot by lot. If an audit needs the refining reference behind a particular lot, ask and we will provide it.
If you hold surplus precious metal of your own, scrap, off-cuts or old stock, Liffey Metals buys and refines it at published prices, and it can go back into the same loop. Contact us about specifications, custom synthesis or a closed-loop supply arrangement.