The original family business, specialising in the smelting and refining of precious metals, was founded in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter by Alexander Betts at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in 1760.
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 values that are easily promised but rarely delivered. These principles remain at the heart of every business within The Betts Group today.
The Betts Group combines the wealth of experience generated from more than 265 years of operation with modern, technically advanced processes to provide a complete precious metals service, specialising in the smelting, recovery and refining of precious metals. Our facilities incorporate the latest recovery equipment, enabling the efficient processing of lower-grade materials containing gold, silver, platinum and palladium.
Precious metals can be recovered from a wide range of sources and industrial processes. We recover precious metals from all types of waste, particularly those generated by the jewellery, ceramics, photographic, industrial and dental sectors, while our expertise extends across many other industries. Whatever the source, our highly trained team processes materials to maximise precious metal recovery. All recovered materials are independently sampled and assayed to ensure complete transparency, with settlements based on current London market prices.
The Betts Group operates one of the UK’s only true precious metals refineries, with the capability to refine metals in-house to 9999 purity. Our extensive knowledge of extractive techniques also enables us to recover diamonds and gemstones from scrap materials – a specialist service offered by very few companies in the UK. We are proud that our refinery in Buxton is the UK’s only Fairtrade and Fairmined certified refinery, and our expertise in audited, segregated small-batch refining also enables us to offer SMO Gold.
Following the recovery and refining process, precious metals are returned to the market through our comprehensive range of bullion and investment products, supplied by Betts Metal Sales and Betts Investments.