Royal Canadian Mint 1

I am a little overwhelmed at this point but we're going to try and show you how the gold goes from the raw form that it is here to the lovely finished gold bars and I've got the perfect guy to do so he's a senior director of refinery operations here at the Royal Canadian Mint Pierre Justino good morning hi good morning Sarah such a cool job oh absolutely it's really exciting and we're sitting in here with about two billion dollars worth of what are we looking at here so we're looking at some rough deposits that we receive either from mines we also get some rough gold and silver from aggregators that send us old jewelry and cutlery and so on okay so now before we talk about exactly how it gets into these lovely gold bars what is each one of these bars worth would you say roughly about $650,000 so you said in this file alone there's about a half a billion dollars right okay so now this is what the gold looks like when it first comes to you but we've got it in a couple of different stages here right what's the next step so this has been pre melted where we take an analysis of the composition of that bar we've got a great lab that does that or world-renowned we've got here a gold that's at 99.5% pure and then we've got the gold sponge or what has gone through the final electrolysis step okay and that's pure gold shall we head into refining room number one show people how the gold is melted down and what if he comes excellent I'm going to bring this with me what exactly did you say this is called again this is cathode we call it cathode and why do you call it that because it's gold that's deposited onto a cathode plate through the electrolysis process so okay so now how much gold roughly is being produced each week in the refining rooms so we've got three to four tonnes of gold that we touch each week here in the refinery and an equivalent amount of silver okay so both are happening in the same room right what are we looking at straight ahead of us here what's being sought we've got that gold sponge that's in the crucible a furnace and it's gonna be cast to create four hundred ounce bars that you see them producing there at the back so that he's just setting up the mold there okay how hot is that furnace that first is about 1,200 degrees C and Kevin and methane are about to pour it now we got a flame there and it's basically just an annealing flame to keep nice shine at the top of this of the gold bar once it's poured okay that flame makes sure that the top stays uh stay stay shiny right and so what needs to happen to the bar after its port so they'll give it a quick buff it will then go to another room to be stamped and to be weighed and serialized what's happening inside this bin here so this is a tumbler that's like a washing machine and it's got some burnishing beads that will just create an even looking surface on our hundred ounce silver bars and here's what it looks like after it's up and buffed now I know that machine's a little loud so we'll let folks at home know that that it might get a little overwhelming here but Michelle would you mind turning it on for us just for a moment so we can see what it's good I got it good so now what exactly are these little pellets these are burnishing beads so stainless steel media that it will just basically give it a even surface so that's ready for striking okay what have we got sorry Michel what have we got in here so we've got some three ways silver grain so a hundred ounces has been pre weighed into here and that'll be poured into as you can see now Michelle is pouring it into the mold and it'll be put into the furnace heat it up and out the bar does the furnace I need to be heated to the same temperature to melt silver as it would be for gold it's approximately the same that's right and in this case silver attracts oxygen so we have a nitrogen blanket that's applied in that furnace how many people on one average day are working here at the Royal Canadian Mint oh we have about 600 700 people here at in Ottawa facility and another 500 in Winnipeg it's amazing you know I had no idea what was happening behind closed doors so now how many bars will will this man be responsible for pouring today would you say oh they'll produce probably about 80 bars today and what happens to the bars after their stay they'll be stored in our vaults we do offer storage solutions the Royal Canadian Mint is a global leader in investment products so they build financial institutions will buy these bars for precious metal investments okay so now this is only refining room number one let's take you still take you into the second one showed you will show you where all of the coins are produced got quite a lot to show you throughout the morning here from the Royal Canadian Mint

Channel: CTVOttawaMorningLive

Views: 19,567

Rating: 4.7530866 out of 5

Keywords: Royal Canadian Mint, Gold, Currency, Coins, CTV Morning Live

Id: tzWem_v7ao8

Length: 4min 59sec (299 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/kyalumtwin]

I watched the Canadian Mint video...I didn't see the milk spotting room :)

[u/Backpack_Stargazer]

The first linked video is a 4 part series of inside the Canadian Mint.

1. Canadian Mint Again, different presenter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YX9egbUNX4

2. Perth Mint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUIMvT0VED4

3. Minting American Silver Eagles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EJLNJgX2Ko

4. Prospector's Gold and Gems. Be sure to check out his other videos as they're short and pretty interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrI-bvgpSUA

(I'll add more as I come across them today)

[u/forneins]

Philharmonic Silver Coin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGC1zAUcfvw Philharmonic Gold Coin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1c5Gf0ZlC8

[u/ShOwStOpp3r]

i noticed the Mulligan mint wasnt listed..i wonder what Amagi metals or RMC would say about this once great mint..lol...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrVvohVhueI

[u/Ionmatt87]

Why did I expect her to drop it and then get disappointed when she didn't...

and how uncomfortable did he get when she picked it up..