Now into its fourth century of trading, the ninth consecutive generation of Betts family management is proud of the company’s long history of integrity and commercial strength. Throughout this time, our core principles have been to provide ‘quality’ and ‘service’ – two words that are easily used but rarely fulfilled. These two qualities are the founding principles of all the Betts Group businesses today.

Stephen Betts & Sons Ltd is the refining arm of the Betts Group and combines the wealth of experience generated from nearly a quarter of a millennium of operation, with modern, technically advanced processes, to provide a complete service in the smelting and refining of precious metals. The company’s factories contain the latest in recovery equipment, which makes possible the smelting and refining of lower grade wastes containing precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and palladium. Precious metals can be recovered from many different sources and processes. We recover precious metals from all types of waste; particularly those generated by the jewellery, ceramic, photographic, industrial and dental professions, although our experience also covers many other industries. Whatever the source, our highly trained staff process the materials to ensure the highest possible recovery of precious metals. All recovered materials are sampled and assayed independently to ensure a transparent process, and the customer is informed of the value in line with London market prices.

Stephen Betts & Sons is one of the only ‘true’ refineries in the UK, with the ability to refine back to 9999 purity in house. Our wealth of knowledge in extractive techniques also enables us to offer diamond and gemstone recovery from scrap; a technique which very few companies in the UK are able to offer. We are proud that our refinery in Buxton is the only Fairtrade and Fair Mined certified refinery in the UK and our experience in auditing small batch segregated refining also makes us the only UK refinery offering Single Mine Origin gold.

Once we have recovered precious metals through our refining operations, we provide a comprehensive range of bullion and investment products back to the market through Betts Metal Sales and Betts Investments.