My precious...

The guarantees afforded by UKAS accreditation gives reassurance to all the UK Assay Office tests on your most cherished precious trinkets

The sale of precious metals and jewellery is often a highly emotive and significant purchase for consumers. However, all that glistens isn’t gold, which is why the area is heavily regulated. Precious metal is always alloyed with other elements to create a suitable alloy for crafting jewellery and the purity of that alloy is fundamental to the value of the piece. For example, with gold prices at a record high, reducing the gold content of an 18ct alloy from 750 parts per thousand (ppt) to only 740 ppt could make an enormous difference to the profitability of a volume line and the consumer would have no idea they had been cheated. 

Independent assaying and hallmarking is therefore a legal requirement for all articles to be sold in the UK as gold, silver or platinum and now palladium, unless they are very light weight. This gives the consumer the guarantee that they are getting what they pay for. In order to provide customers with the necessary confidence in the integrity of the hallmarking process, the UK’s Assay Offices, who carry out the hallmarking have their services accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS).

UK hallmarking is regulated by the Hallmarking Act 1973. This established the British Hallmarking Council to ensure there is adequate provision of hallmarking services within the UK and to supervise the activities of the assay offices to ensure they act independently and with integrity. There are four Assay Offices in the UK, based in London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Edinburgh.

The regulation of the goldsmith’s trade can be traced back to 1300’s, when the Goldsmiths’ Company in London received its first Royal Charter in 1327 to test gold and silver. The word hallmark originates from the fifteenth century, when London’s craftsmen were required to bring their artefacts to Goldsmith’s Hall for assaying and marking. Over 600 years later, the London Assay Office is still based at Goldsmith’s Hall and its leopard’s head mark is recognised internationally as one of the leading stamps of approval in the precious metal trade. Its 60 staff test and hallmark approximately three million articles of gold, silver, platinum and palladium a year. These have been sent in by over 10,000 customers, most of which are independent designer craftsmen.

In 1773 an Act of Parliament established separate assaying offices in Birmingham and Sheffield. This arose when local silversmiths, fed up with having to send their wares to London for hallmarking, petitioned Parliament for their own offices. Over the past 200 years both the Sheffield and Birmingham offices have gone from strength to strength. Today each office hallmarks several million articles of gold, silver, platinum and palladium every year, with the Birmingham office laying claim to being the largest assaying office in the world.

Modern assaying has kept pace with changes in the precious metals designs and markets.   In 2007 new legislation for ‘mixed metals’ meant that jewellery made from a combination of metals such as silver and titanium could now be hallmarked. This, along with the inclusion of palladium into the Act as of January 2010 has widened and increased the work of the UK’s assay offices.

The British Hallmarking Council has laid down quality assurance requirements which stipulate that all assay offices should have their assaying and marking procedures accredited to ISO/IEC 17025:2005. Without exception all four assay offices have selected accreditation by UKAS to the laboratory standard ISO/IEC17025 as the most appropriate reassurance for their assaying procedures.

UKAS is the sole body recognised by Government for the assessment and verification – against internationally-recognised standards – of certification, inspection, testing and calibration activities. The main purpose of accreditation is to determine, in the public interest, the technical competence and integrity of organisations offering testing and analysis services. In other words, UKAS ‘checks the checkers’. Since its inception in 1995, UKAS has accredited some 1,500 laboratories to the ISO/IEC 17025 standard.

Achieving accreditation provides an organisation with many benefits, ranging from enhanced standing within its industry to improved internal efficiencies and access to marketplaces. Sheffield Analytical Services (SAS) is a division of the assay office in Sheffield, and was one of the first laboratories in the UK to be accredited to ISO/IEC 17025. Matthew Hawker is Quality Manager at SAS and is ideally positioned to judge the benefits accreditation gives the business. Matthew said: “Accreditation is key to our business. UKAS accredited laboratories meet the stringent demands of ISO/ IEC 17025 and are inspected annually and reassessed every four years to ensure that they conform to these rigorous standards. Between assessments, these high standards have to be maintained at all times, which means we are constantly auditing and re-assessing our internal systems, leading to a continual cycle of improvement. Having a good working relationship with UKAS is also an excellent source of advice and knowledge to be called on if required. This reaps its rewards by improving operational efficiency and winning additional business.”

Dr Robert Organ, Deputy Warden at the London Assay Office echoed those sentiments: “In addition to the extra sales generated by the confidence accreditation brings the customer, the key internal benefit relates to the ethos of continuous improvement which lies at the heart of the standard. The requirement to analyse feedback and use this to improve products and processes has provided invaluable benefits in terms of both customer care and improvement to process efficiencies. Added to that, the requirement for regular inter-laboratory comparisons has proved important to ensure that reliable and consistently high laboratory methods are employed. The initial and on-going assessments prevent complacency and ensure that the organisation continues to work in an internationally recognised and consistent way.”

In addition to the company itself, the users of accredited services also benefit from the accreditation process. The Birmingham Assay office is no stranger to UKAS, currently having 39 methods accredited by UKAS, including one of only two diamond testing facilities in the world. Dippal Manchanda, Technical Director is responsible for the Birmingham Offices assaying standards. He believes UKAS Accreditation is a huge benefit to the customer but one which is taken for granted, just like the hallmark itself. “Many people buy precious metal jewellery confidently because they know it can’t be sold in the UK if it is not hallmarked. The traceability back to the individual Assay Office adds further weight to the guarantee of the precious metal content of that item. However, they really have no idea of the lengths that the Assay Offices go to, to ensure that every item is correctly marked.”

Manchanda continued: “UKAS accreditation for our assaying process guarantees the UK jewellery buyer a competent and consistent testing process and the reassurance that the high value metal content of their jewellery really is what it purports to be. There are very few products that come with the same level of reassurance as a piece of jewellery which has been independently assayed and hallmarked by a UKAS accredited Assay Office.”

Dr Robert Organ said: “Many of Assay Office London’s customers are small businesses and have insufficient resources to carry out testing themselves. It is important for them to know that assay offices operate to the highest possible standards. Accreditation enhances our long established reputation for quality and professionalism. This has been demonstrated on many occasions when companies approach us, confident in the knowledge that the Assay Office operates to high standards through both accreditation and on-going assessment.”

Matthew Hawker at SAS concluded: “Dealing with a UKAS accredited laboratory gives the client a guarantee of excellent service and quality of work. For clients who must demonstrate due diligence in their procedures, the use of a UKAS accredited laboratory is of vital importance.”