The Perth Mint is

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

's official

bullion Bullion is non-ferrous metal that has been refined to a high standard of elemental purity. The term is ordinarily applied to bulk metal used in the production of coins and especially to precious metals such as gold and silver. It comes from ...

mint Mint or The Mint may refer to: Plants * Lamiaceae, the mint family ** ''Mentha'', the genus of plants commonly known as "mint" Coins and collectibles * Mint (facility), a facility for manufacturing coins * Mint condition, a state of like-new ...

and wholly owned by the

Government of Western Australia The Government of Western Australia is the States and territories of Australia, Australian state democratic administrative authority of Western Australia. It is also commonly referred to as the WA Government or the Western Australian Governmen ...

. Established on 20 June 1899, two years before Australia's Federation in 1901, the Perth Mint was the last of three Australian colonial branches of the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

Royal Mint The Royal Mint is the United Kingdom's official maker of British coins. It is currently located in Llantrisant, Wales, where it moved in 1968. Operating under the legal name The Royal Mint Limited, it is a limited company that is wholly ow ...

(after the now-defunct

Sydney Mint The Sydney Mint in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, is the oldest surviving public building in the Sydney central business district. Built between 1811 and 1816 as the southern wing of the Sydney Hospital, it was then known as the ''Rum Hospi ...

and Melbourne Mint) intended to refine gold from the gold rushes and to mint

gold sovereign The sovereign is a British gold coin with a nominal value of one pound sterling (£1) and contains of pure gold. Struck since 1817, it was originally a circulating coin that was accepted in Britain and elsewhere in the world; it is now a ...

s and half-sovereigns for the

British Empire The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, colonies, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, mandates, and other Dependent territory, territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It bega ...

. Along with the Royal Australian Mint, which produces coins of the Australian dollar for circulation, the Perth Mint is the older of Australia's two mints issuing coins that are

legal tender Legal tender is a form of money that Standard of deferred payment, courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment in court for any monetary debt. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything ...

History

Reverse 2022 Australia 1 oz Silver Swan Perth Mint

Perth Mint, as a business entity, was established during the 1890s, as a subsidiary of the

in the

. The foundation stone of the Mint building was laid in 1896 by John Forrest. The building was officially opened on 20 June 1899. At that time, the population of

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

(WA) was growing rapidly (23,000 in 1869 and 180,000 in 1900) due to the discovery of rich gold deposits at Coolgardie,

Kalgoorlie Kalgoorlie-Boulder (or just Kalgoorlie) is a city in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, located east-northeast of Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway. It is referred to as Kalgoorlie–Boulder as the surroundi ...

and the Murchison region. The Mint initially served two purposes. Firstly, it minted coins for circulation in WA – this had previously been done externally, and as a result, there had often been insufficient currency in circulation. Secondly, the Mint bought the vast majority of gold mined in WA; at the time, a large proportion of mining was done by "diggers" (

prospector Prospector may refer to: Space exploration * Prospector (spacecraft), a planned lunar probe, canceled in 1962 * ''Lunar Prospector'', a NASA spacecraft Trains * Prospector (train), a passenger train operated by the Denver & Rio Grande Western ra ...

s and/or small-scale, independent miners), who had migrated to WA in thousands from other parts of Australia and overseas. Mining businesses were able to sell their raw gold directly to the Mint, where it was made into gold coins and

. Although WA took part in the Federation of the Australian colonies in 1901, the Mint remained under the control of the UK government for a further 69 years. On 1 July 1970, ownership was acquired by the state

government of Western Australia The Government of Western Australia is the States and territories of Australia, Australian state democratic administrative authority of Western Australia. It is also commonly referred to as the WA Government or the Western Australian Governmen ...

, as a

statutory authority A statutory body or statutory authority is a body set up by law (statute) that is authorised to implement certain legislation on behalf of the relevant country or state, sometimes by being empowered or delegated to set rules (for example reg ...

. In the 32 years up to 1931, the Perth Mint struck more than 106 million gold sovereigns, and nearly 735,000 half-sovereigns (intermittently between 1900 and 1920), for use as

currency A currency is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a ''system of money'' in common use within a specific envi ...

in Australia and throughout the British Empire. The Mint stopped making gold sovereigns when Britain abandoned the

gold standard A gold standard is a backed currency, monetary system in which the standard economics, economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the ...

in 1931. Nevertheless, the

refinery A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries ...

remained busy as staff turned their skills to making fine gold bullion bars. But it was not long before the Perth Mint was involved again in the production of coins. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the Perth Mint began minting the Australian

coin A coin is a small object, usually round and flat, used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by ...

age from

base metal A base metal is a common and inexpensive metal, as opposed to a precious metal such as gold or silver. In numismatics, coins often derived their value from the precious metal content; however, base metals have also been used in coins in the past ...

s. Up until the end of 1983, the Perth Mint also manufactured much of Australia's lower-denomination

currency. The Perth Mint achieved "arguably the purest of all gold" in 1957 when the mint produced a proof plate of almost six nines. It was verified by the Goldsmiths' Company and deemed to have results of "nearly 999.999 parts per 1000". The Royal Mint was so impressed that it ordered some of the gold as the benchmark for its own standards. The Mint's new direction was formalised in 1987 with the creation of Gold Corporation by a State Act of Parliament. Under a unique agreement with the

Commonwealth of Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It has a total area of , making it the sixth-largest country in ...

's Department of the Treasury, the Perth Mint's new operator was empowered to mint and market gold, silver and platinum Australian

coinage to investors and collectors worldwide. Prime Minister

Bob Hawke Robert James Lee Hawke (9 December 1929 – 16 May 2019) was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the 23rd prime minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991. He held office as the Australian Labor Party, leader of the La ...

launched the Australian Nugget Gold Coins Series in 1987. The first day's trading yielded sales of of gold worth , equivalent to in , well above the sales target of to the end of June. Up to 2000, the Perth Mint's refined gold output totalling , representing 3.25% of the total weight of gold produced by humankind. This is about the current holdings of gold bullion in the

United States Bullion Depository The United States Bullion Depository, often known as Fort Knox, is a fortified bank vault, vault building located next to the United States Army post of Fort Knox, Kentucky. It is operated by the United States Department of the Treasury. The v ...

Fort Knox Fort Knox is a United States Army installation in Kentucky, south of Louisville and north of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Elizabethtown. It is adjacent to the United States Bullion Depository (also known as Fort Knox), which is used to house a larg ...

. In 2003, the Perth Mint officially opened an state-of-the-art

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer ...

facility next door to its original

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

building.

One Tonne Gold Coin

In October 2011, the Perth Mint created the world's largest, heaviest and most valuable gold coin, breaking the record previously held by the

Royal Canadian Mint The Royal Canadian Mint () is the mint of Canada and a Crown corporation, operating under an act of parliament referred to as the ''Royal Canadian Mint Act''. The shares of the mint are held in trust for the Crown in right of Canada. The mi ...

. The coin is approximately in diameter and thick, and made of of 99.99% pure gold. It features, on the

obverse The obverse and reverse are the two flat faces of coins and some other two-sided objects, including paper money, flags, seals, medals, drawings, old master prints and other works of art, and printed fabrics. In this usage, ''obverse'' ...

side, the effigy of

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 19268 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. ...

, and a red kangaroo on the reverse side. It is legal tender in Australia with face value , but at the time of minting it was valued at , equivalent to in . Today, the Perth Mint continues to provide refining and other services to the gold industry and manufactures many coin related

numismatic Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals, and related objects. Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also inclu ...

items for investors and coin collectors. It is responsible for manufacturing and marketing most of Australia's legal tender precious metal coins, including

proof Proof most often refers to: * Proof (truth), argument or sufficient evidence for the truth of a proposition * Alcohol proof, a measure of an alcoholic drink's strength Proof may also refer to: Mathematics and formal logic * Formal proof, a co ...

quality Australian Nugget gold coins, Australian Platinum Koala coins, Australian Silver Kookaburra coins, Swan series coins and bullion. As of November 2019, the Perth Mint refines approximately 79 percent of the Australasian market's gold production and 30 percent of silver at a separate secured facility outside the city centre. It mints coins and bars from both Australian gold and metal sourced from other countries, representing 10 percent of the global production. It sold about in pure gold, silver, and platinum bullion bars and coins in 2018.

Gold-backed digital assets

The Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT) was a

digital asset A digital asset is anything that exists only in digital form and comes with a distinct usage right or distinct permission for use. Data that do not possess those rights are not considered assets. ''Digital assets'' include, but are not limited t ...

offered from 2019 to 2023 by Singapore-based Trovio (formerly Infinigold), using the Perth Mint name under licence. Each PMGT was backed 1:1 by GoldPass accounts held by Trovio at the Perth Mint. The PMGT was discontinued in late 2023. GoldPass was a smartphone application launched in 2018 by the Perth Mint. The app allowed users to buy, sell and trade digital certificates representing physical gold or silver held at the Perth Mint.

Trail

A collaboration known as the ''Gold Industry Group'' began a ''Heart of Gold Discovery Trail'' in Perth in October 2018. The project included the Perth Mint as a partner.

Controversy

In March 2023, The Perth Mint responded to claims from the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is ...

's Four Corners program that it had faced the prospect of recalling $9billion of bars from China in 2018. The Perth Mint refuted the allegations stating a small number of bars did not meet the non-gold specifications of the Shanghai Gold Exchange which require that the non-gold componentthat is, 0.01% of the bar or 100 parts per million (ppm)contains no more than 50 ppm silver. The

London Bullion Market Association The London Bullion Market Association (now known simply as LBMA), established in 1987, is the international trade association representing the global Over The Counter (OTC) bullion market, and defines itself as "the global authority on precious ...

(LBMA) launched an Incident Review Process into the Mint and concluded it did not find any instances of zero tolerance non-conformance. In June 2020, an investigation by the ''

Australian Financial Review The ''Australian Financial Review'' (''AFR'') is an Australian compact daily newspaper with a focus on business, politics and economic affairs. The newspaper is based in Sydney, New South Wales, and has been published continuously since its foun ...

'' found that Perth Mint had purchased annually from a convicted killer in

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. The Western Australian corruption watchdog launched an investigation. On 27 July it was reported that

HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...

and

JP Morgan JPMorgan Chase & Co. (stylized as JPMorganChase) is an American multinational finance corporation headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. It is the largest bank in the United States, and the world's largest bank by mar ...

stopped buying gold from Perth Mint, citing potential damage to their reputation. On 10 August a LBMA probe into the Perth Mint found no serious examples of misconduct. Further investigation into the Perth Mint has exposed a secret recording of the Perth Mint CEO Richard Hayes and the failure to refer allegations of impropriety to the Western Australian Corruption and Crime Commission in late 2017. This has resulted in the corruption watchdog launching an investigation into the Perth Mint.

Operation Atlantis

International enforcement sources confirmed in October 2020 that Euro Pacific Bank was the target of Operation Atlantis, an international tax probe by the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement, a task force made up of the tax offices of Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Canada, that was set up after the

Panama Papers The Panama Papers () are 11.5 million leaked documents (or 2.6 terabytes of data) published beginning April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. These document ...

leak in 2016. The Perth Mint partnered with Euro Pacific Bank to allow the bank's customers to buy gold. The Perth Mint was also reportedly probed by the

Australian Taxation Office The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is an Australian statutory agency and the principal revenue collection body for the Australian Government. The ATO has responsibility for administering the Taxation in Australia, Australian federal taxation ...

in January 2020. On 20 October 2020, the ''Australian Financial Review'' reported that the Perth Mint allowed clients of a tax haven bank, which was being investigated for its links with global organised crime syndicates, to purchase more than $100 million of gold without conducting the identity checks required to prevent money laundering. On 30 August 2022, Australia's financial crimes regulator, AUSTRAC, appointed an external auditor to investigate concerns about how the Perth Mint complies with its obligations under Australian money laundering legislation.

Tax havens

In July 2020, an article in the ''Australian Financial Review'' revealed that the Perth Mint had signed the

Bank of Cyprus The Bank of Cyprus (BoC; ; ) is a Cypriot financial services company established in 1899 with its headquarters in Strovolos. Bank of Cyprus has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervisio ...

as a customer despite the

US State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...

declaring

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

a "major

money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...

jurisdiction" and warning about its links to Russian

organised crime Organized crime is a category of transnational, national, or local group of centralized enterprises run to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally thought of as a form of illegal business, some ...

. It also granted approved dealer status to Euro Pacific Bank, from the

British Virgin Islands The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands and north-west ...

, and Swiss private bank, BFI Consulting. All three institutions provide offshore banking services to clients who may be seeking to avoid tax or disguise the true ownership of their assets.

Data breach

In September 2018 the Perth Mint defended its decision not to make disclosure announcements to the

Australian Securities Exchange Australian Securities Exchange Ltd (ASX) is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary Exchange (organized market), securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or c ...

(ASX) and

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

(NYSE) on the grounds the breach did not relate to its ASX-listed PMGold nor NYSE-listed AAAU investment products.

Child labour

In June 2020 the Perth Mint said it would stop processing metal from

artisanal An artisan (from , ) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art, sculpture, clothing, food ite ...

and small-scale miners after allegations that it took gold dug in Papua New Guinea using

child labour Child labour is the exploitation of children through any form of work that interferes with their ability to attend regular school, or is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such exploitation is prohibited by legislation w ...

and toxic mercury.

Notes

References

External links

*
Perth Mint Bullion website

State Heritage record
{{Australian currency Mints of Australia Museums in Perth, Western Australia Numismatic museums in Australia East Perth, Western Australia Landmarks in Perth, Western Australia Australian gold rushes 1899 establishments in Australia George Temple-Poole buildings Romanesque Revival architecture in Australia Perth Mint Swindle Bullion dealers State Register of Heritage Places in the City of Perth Exchange-traded funds