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India-based Kayzan Group, engaged in bullion trade, wholesale and retail of gold jewellery and multi-branded consumer goods in the UAE, is planning to set up a gold refinery in the UAE with an installed capacity of one tonne per day at a cost of $20 million.
The refinery, which will use scrap gold as feedstock, will be located at Sharjah International Airport Free Zone (SAIF) with an annual refining capacity of 365 tonnes, said Latheef Cholapilakkal, Director, Operations, Kayzan Group.
“We are taking the backward integration route as scrap gold is sourced from the market and our customers. Traditionally we have been sourcing scrap gold from the market over the past 15 years, which we give to the refineries to refine for our use, as gold bars and jewellery,” he told Zawya Projects.
The group, with Rizan as its jewellery brand, has seven retail outlets in the UAE, two outlets and a gold jewellery manufacturing unit in Oman.
Latheef said several Rizan outlets are being opened in Kerala, India.
“It is a natural decision to start a refinery as a backward integration project. Our targeted customers for refined gold are the retailers because they are the primary source of scrap collection. We also collect scrap gold from our walk-in customers at our outlets who exchange old gold jewellery for new ones,” he said.
Kayzan is also planning to extend its retail network and bullion stores to other GCC countries, Singapore and Malaysia.
It already has bullion and jewellery wholesale business in in the US and Canada.
The Group also imports jewellery from Italy and Turkey.
(Reporting by Bhaskar Raj; Editing by Anoop Menon)
