Gold has always occupied a unique place in human history, symbolizing power, wealth, and resilience across civilizations. In the twenty-first century, against a backdrop of record-high prices and global uncertainty, the metal is being redefined. Instead of being extracted from remote mines, it is increasingly recovered from cities themselves, through a process known as urban mining — the transformation of heirlooms, broken jewellery, and industrial waste into investment-grade bullion. In New Zealand, this practice is not only expanding but reshaping how the nation understands both gold and its future.
At the center of this transformation stands New Zealand Gold Merchants (NZGM), the country’s largest bullion refinery, whose Onehunga facility has become emblematic of this new economy of recovery. In April 2025, the company recorded its busiest month ever, with volumes of recycled gold reaching unprecedented levels. For NZGM’s managing director Tony Coleman, this is more than a market trend: it is the foundation of a new reality where objects once thought of as sentimental trinkets or obsolete fragments are melted down and reborn as pure, certified bullion under the NZ PURE™ brand.
Each item that enters the refinery carries with it both material and cultural weight. Pocket watches brought across oceans during the nineteenth-century gold rush, family lockets that have lost their wearers, rings bent out of shape, or even the solitary earring that has long lost its pair — all of these fragments of personal history are recast into new economic life. In this transition from memory to capital, urban mining is not only about recycling metals but also about reinterpreting value in a society where the past quite literally funds the future.
The technical process itself is as rigorous as it is symbolic. Scrap is first melted into rough bars, which are then transformed into golden “splatter” resembling cornflakes, increasing the surface area to facilitate the removal of silver, platinum, palladium, and other metals. After repeated washing and furnace cycles, the material becomes a dense clay-like “cake,” which is then melted once again to produce pure gold bars. Alongside this, NZGM also processes lemel — the fine dust and shavings collected from jewellers’ workshops. Each batch undergoes X-ray fluorescence analysis to determine composition before it enters the refining cycle, ensuring a standard of purity that aligns with global benchmarks.
The appeal of urban mining extends beyond technological refinement. What distinguishes the movement in New Zealand today is the growing participation of younger people and middle-income earners, who increasingly see gold not as the preserve of the wealthy elite but as an accessible means of long-term saving. As NZGM director Peter Coleman notes, gold’s value lies not only in its market price but also in its universal availability: “Even small amounts can be converted into savings, and gold remains one of the most reliable ways to preserve them.” This democratization of access is transforming gold from a luxury into a shared economic resource, binding individual households to the broader cycle of global finance.
In the wider world, this shift reflects a larger trend. According to the World Gold Council, recycled gold accounted for more than a quarter of global supply in 2024, underscoring how urban mining is becoming not only an economic alternative but an ecological imperative. Unlike conventional mining, the process requires far less energy and leaves a significantly smaller carbon footprint, aligning it with the demands of a world increasingly defined by climate responsibility.
The New Zealand example thus resonates far beyond its national borders. It demonstrates how local practices of recovery can integrate into a global system of sustainable production, where history itself is melted down, refined, and recast into future capital. Urban mining in this sense is not simply an industrial process; it is a cultural and economic redefinition of what gold means in the twenty-first century. It unites personal stories with global systems, memory with investment, and the past with the future. Gold, in its recycled form, becomes not just a store of wealth but a store of trust, a resource whose enduring value lies in its ability to conserve, sustain, and renew.