The Perth Mint is slugging stackers about $1.50 extra premium on a two oz lunar effective Monday. :/ Actually going to be cheaper to buy two single oz coins instead of a two oz coin.
Shipment cost on bulk silver into Australia is cents per ounce, so our distance is not a barrier to competitors. Making coins isn't as easy or cheap as you think. From http://goldchat.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-are-there-not-enough-coins.html The hesitancy of mints to gear up is because the cost of a modern full precious metal coin production line is high. What sort of investment is required? One Grabener coin press (the most commonly used one) is circa $1 million. That is just for the press, for blank manufacture you need melting furnaces, breakdown mills, pickling plants, weighing machines, scrubbers, vacuum furnances etc etc. If you look at the last Perth Mint annual report (which is almost exclusively a precious metals mint), you will see that on page 24 the cost of plant and equipment (pre depreciation) is AUD 22 million. That equipment supported only 8.1 million blanks and an 8% share of the world gold bullion coin market. And we haven't even begun to consider working capital requirements cover cash costs and work-in-progress inventory.
Bron, thanks for the heads up. So Silver is CHEAP?????????? When you take in the equipment & labour costs to mint your fine products?
Wouldn't mind knowing what shipping method the mint uses to get 1000oz bars into the country that cheap
Well, Santa can fit enough presents for the whole world into his sack so there is obviously some bending of space time going on there and capacity isn't an issue. He's also not busy for 364 days of the year so my money is on Santa being the Perth Mint's delivery boy. Its the only logical explanation.
Actually, a better question would be: does the Perth Mint's courier service pay GST and then make them fill out a form to claim it back on every single order?
Sea containers would be the most economical way. With the global economy still clawing its way back from the GFC, cargo ships are practically begging for work. This article might not mention container ships specifically, but the fact that a bulk cargo ship that once cost 300K to charter can be had for a measly 10K now speaks volumes. That article was written in 2009, so expect prices to have rebounded some, but I highly doubt they're back to full pre-GFC prices.
If we source silver from overseas (usually London or US) we ship it in, you can't air freight bulk silver, the cost per ounce would be too high. It takes around 2-3 months via boat and we do them in sea containers. A container has max capacity of 20 tonnes so that is all we can pack into them even though volume wise you could fit more. 20t = 643,000oz = $23 million
Ha ha. That's why you need to use an import/export agent to smooth the process and avoid that sort of crap.
Hmm...well, the alleged "shipping container method" is very interesting Bron, however I'd just like to say at this point that I did not receive any silver for Christmas last year. Obviously there was some kind of oversight, but I'm prepared to overlook it on the proviso that the missing silver from last year is delivered with the silver that should be arriving this coming Christmas. Of course you wouldn't know anything about that at all, but I thought it was worth mentioning. You know, just putting it out there in case you can "ahem* see that the issue gets resolved.
Thought I would just add this into this thread rather than starting a new one... Can someone tell me why Ainslie are currently selling 20 x 1oz Koala/Kooks for $808.67, while the price directly from Perth Mint is $925.60. edit: Is this because of the "fabrication" increase? i.e. Ainslie bought them before the prices went up, so can therefoure sell them cheaper?
I think it's because Ainslie (as well as other Perth Mint Distributors) can buy from the Mint at wholesale prices while individuals buying from the Mint pay retail prices (the prices on the bullion trading website).
