[SMM Gold Flash] Ethiopia inaugurated its first National Precious Metals Refinery at the Bole Lemi Special Economic Zone on 10 October. The facility is a partnership between state-owned Ethiopian Investment Holdings and Sam Precious Metals; Reuters put the initial investment at US$50 million. The Prime Minister’s Office said the refinery is designed to assay, refine and cast gold, and make gold and silver bars, with announced full-capacity processing of more than 600 tonnes of precious metals a year.
The launch gives Ethiopia a domestic route to refine gold into export-ready bullion and potentially serve neighbouring producers, supporting traceability and retaining more processing value in Africa. However, the 600-tonne figure is design capacity for precious metals—not confirmed gold output—and neither the government nor operator disclosed current throughput, utilisation or feed commitments. The opening therefore establishes refining capability; it does not show that the plant is already operating at nameplate capacity.
