Metalor has four divisions: Refining Division – for the processing of precious metals and the manufacture of ingots; Advanced Coatings – for electronic and decorative applications; Watches and Jewelry – for jewellery and various watch products and Electrotechnics – to serve the electrical contacts market.





Refining
The Refining Division offers a very broad range of products in gold, silver, platinum and palladium to banks, industrial customers, the watch industry and to its other internal divisions. Once the actual refining of the precious metals is completed, various gold products are produced such as ingots, gold grain, silver grain and fine metal powders to name just a few.
All of the products are rigorously controlled and samples are controlled by in-house laboratories to determine the amount of precious metals in each lot. These results are delivered and guaranteed by ‘sworn-in’ assayers according to the stringent Swiss federal laws on precious metals – some of the most strict and meticulous in the world.
Maintaining its ‘Swiss’ reputation for excellence is the division’s top priority and a constant improvement of processes, speed and quality has led to Metalor being nominated as an ‘Official reference’ by the London Bullion market Association.







Watch industry services
The industries sensitive to economic cycles and to the variations in price of precious metals are the existing and potential clients of Metalor’s Watches and Jewelry Division. In the watch kingdom, where many companies are reorganizing to a vertical production system, this division’s flexibility, high standards and reliability are proving to be a genuine asset to watchmakers.
In addition to producing watch blanks for companies, the division also produces wristlet profiles for the production of bracelets, cases and various components for watch movements such as rotors, tubes, wires, sheets, case blanks and plating liquids. With its extensive range of 18 carat gold pale yellow, yellow, pink, red and white alloys for lost wax casting, production costs are substantially reduced by the elimination of defects relating to porosity.
Roderich Hess, Key Account Manager of the Watch Division, said, “Using our stamping and machining facilities, along with the alloys that we produce, watch cases, including the case backs, are produced for our clients from bars with a three-stamping process and annealing, resulting in a finished product that has reduced the normal production cycle by three. What this means in economic terms is that our clients have much less of a financial outlay.
“However, Metalor’s services go further. We handle the precious metal accounts which represents financial security for them, we can carry out any special alloying demands, we have in-house design capabilities, we can transform, polish and produce watch cases from zero to any semi-finished degree as requested by our customers. Additionally, we have the capacity to produce very small quantities for our customers, a service that we call SQS – Small Quantity Service.
“We’re not in competition with watch or other case manufacturers, we like to work in conjunction with them. Many companies come to us with a rough design that they want put into reality and we take it from there by producing a three dimensional technical drawing. We also serve many of the leading Swiss brands by keeping the tooling on our premises and we simply produce the required quantity of cases upon request.”

A question of economics
“In addition to a more cost-effective production of cases and components, we take the responsibility for the production, guarantee the quality and reduce the client’s risk factor. Finally, when we have completed the production cycle, and this is an extremely important advantage, we can close the loop by returning the scrap into the client’s Metalor account without any further costs since we supplied the precious metal.”
Hess concludes, “Time is of the essence, they say, and working with Metalor’s established and well-oiled system, with the guarantees that that entails, you don’t need to have a business degree to see that it is economically viable to use our facilities.”





Source: August - September 2005 Issue

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