Essentially, total costs related to gold concentrates commercialization comprise transportation, insurance, superintendence, assaying and marketing aspects. The first one involves all freight needed to deliver the gold product to the buyer. Insurance costs are determined considering he net smelter return that will be received for each shipment. Superintendence costs are those related with witnessing on the gold mining behalf, of the weighing and sampling of the gold product either on discharge of the ship or on transport at buyer’s location. Basically, superintendence may be considered optional in some cases, but it is important to assure that all the procedures included in the commercialization were done perfectly. There are specialized people to do this kind of work and the cost is relative low (e.g. 0.40-0.50 dollars per tonne).
Regarding assaying cost, they are required to determine the quality of the gold product and there are some certified and authorized labs to perform these assays. The sale of the gold product and the determination of the net smelter return is done on the weighing, sampling and assaying of each shipment before loading and at the destination port. In order to determine the net smelter return, the smelter contract determines the tonnage into which each shipment will be split for weighing, sampling, moisture and gold assaying. The sample from each portion is divided into four parts. One sample is taken by the buyer and assayed for gold and other elements, and one sub-sample by the seller or an authorized person. When the assays are available, they are delivered to all the parts involved in the commercialization process. When any assay is out of the limits, a third sample is assayed. When this assay is available, the final assay is determined.
It is important to mention that marketing costs are related to identify the optimum buyer for the gold product. For some gold mining companies, the complexity of the final product makes necessary to identify the best option. There are marketing companies and trading companies, which may provide good marketing studies when they are acting as agents of the company. The selection or use of these marketing options is dependent on the gold mining company evaluation of the market locations, gold market situation and especial considerations. The commission for this kind of service or study is an agreement between the gold mining company and the marketing company. As a reference, the commission is approximately 1.5% to 4% of the net smelter return.