LBMA suspended Hunan Shuikoushan Nonferrous Metals Group Co Ltd (SKS) from Good Delivery standing with effect from 21 August 2026. The stated ground is the refiner’s FY2025 Responsible Silver compliance reporting, on which the assurance provider SLR Consulting Ltd. issued a modified opinion. LBMA records that it continues to engage with the suspended refiner under the Good Delivery Rules.
Three assurance providers and three other refiners lost their standing in the eighteen months before this notice:
- 13 February 2025 — Arkan and Ergin (Turkey) removed from the Approved Service Providers List
- 13 June 2025 — PwC Belgium removed
- 21 October 2025 — Bureau Veritas (China) removed
- 8 May 2026 — Guangxi Nandan Nanfang Metal Company Limited and Minshan Environmental Energy High Tech Co., Ltd suspended on the same ground, the same reporting year, the same assurance provider
- 5 August 2026 — Shandong Gold Smelting Co. Ltd suspended from the gold and silver Good Delivery Lists as an interim measure, under an Incident Review Process opened after its addition to the United States UFLPA Entity List
- 21 August 2026 — SKS
An assurance failure and an Incident Review Process are two different events, and a refiner returns from each by a different route. An assurance failure is a documented non-conformance in a refiner’s due-diligence system, cured by a corrective action plan and a clean opinion: Kyrgyzaltyn JSC, suspended in September 2021 for not submitting its audit reports, returned to the List on 3 May 2022 on exactly that route. An Incident Review Process has no fixed end point and can conclude in removal. A counterparty screening a mark needs to know which of the two applies, not only that the refiner is suspended.
A suspension does not unmake bars the refiner has already cast. Hindustan Zinc Ltd was suspended on 18 July 2022 for failing Responsible Sourcing Programme requirements and reinstated on 4 October 2022, and LBMA records that silver refined during the suspension counts as compliant with the Good Delivery Rules. Accreditation is a status the producer holds on a given date, and the bar carries the date it was cast.
Intake therefore carries three dated checks rather than one: the refiner’s standing at casting, its standing on the day the bar is accepted into custody, and its standing again at buyback. The assurance provider carries a status of its own. An annual assurance is only as good as the provider that signs it, and three providers left the Approved Service Providers List across 2025, so “audited annually” resolves into two facts — who audited, and whether that provider still stands.
A modified assurance opinion is a conclusion about a management system, not about metal. The notice makes no finding on fineness or serial integrity, and its ground is Responsible Silver reporting, with nothing recorded under the Responsible Gold Guidance.
Format and the accreditation behind it run on LBMA Good Delivery Gold Bars — Refinery-Origin Supply.