Doré payable rates explained: how the assay sets the real price
A doré bar is never worth spot times weight. The payable rate — what the refinery actually credits you — is where deals are won or quietly lost.
Indicative only. Final settlement follows the destination refinery fire assay and the agreed instrument terms.
What a payable rate actually is
Refined bullion trades at spot because it is a known quantity: 99.99% gold, certified. Doré is a mixture — typically 92–96% gold with silver and base metals — so no refinery pays for the full fine content. They pay a payable rate: the percentage of fine gold they credit after accounting for refining losses, treatment charges, and their margin. Ninety-two to ninety-seven percent is the working range, and every point of it is negotiated.
The arithmetic is simple but unforgiving: gross weight, times verified purity, times payable rate, times spot. A 25 kg bar at 95.89% carries roughly 771 fine ounces; at a 92% payable that is 709 ounces you get paid for — and 62 you do not.
How the assay sets the number
Everything begins with measurement. Handheld XRF gives a field reading in seconds — our origin screening uses Olympus Vanta units in precious-metals mode, and the reading on record (Au 95.89% ±2.58, Ag 4.11% ±0.93, 23.01 karat) is what opens a negotiation, not what closes it.
Settlement follows the destination refinery's fire assay, which is slower, destructive, and definitive. Reputable transactions treat the XRF as the screening gate and the fire assay as the settlement number, with the payable rate agreed in writing before metal moves.
Where value leaks
Between the assay and the wire, value escapes through predictable cracks: treatment and refining charges, freight and insurance, export royalties at origin, and — the largest and least discussed — a payable rate conceded under time pressure by sellers without alternatives.
The defense is structural. Verified origin documentation, a corridor the refinery already trusts, and competing buyers at the table turn the payable rate from a concession into a negotiation. Run your own numbers with the estimator, then read how the full transaction sequence protects them.