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To: long-gone who wrote (23317)	11/23/1998 11:47:00 AM
From: IngotWeTrust	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116984

Well, rh, as you well know, there is "closed" and there is CLOSED! The world of money is a 24/7/365 nowadays, so I doubt much will be made of this particular "closure." Now, the one that folks *AREN'T* prepared for is the pre-announced Bank Holiday(daze!!) the first week of January 2000. And that fact is already been stated and known in some circle, 'tis fait accompli so...there's all the SS checks, the paychecks, the annuity checks, the.... well, you get the pix...as we soft American's and other computer literate nations screech to a halt. Talk about impact! Doubt if old AG will be sleeping in much that week.... O/49r

To: long-gone who wrote (23317)	11/23/1998 11:48:00 AM
From: Giraffe	Respond to of 116984

GOLD: Adding value to African precious metal Marketing the precious metal is a new concept to South African producers but there are converts to the idea, says Victor Mallet When Bobby Godsell, president of South Africa's Chamber of Mines, presented a gold medallion to Penuell Maduna, minister of minerals and energy, this month he announced that as a result of the gift Mr Maduna "will become a criminal". He was only half joking. "It is not legal to give South Africans pieces of gold that are not wrought gold or legal tender," Mr Godsell explained. A ban on the sale of gold within the borders of the world's biggest producer is just one of the many obstacles to the marketing of gold with added value rather than just as a commodity. The concept of adding value has been successfully adopted for two other precious commodities whose production is dominated by South African companies, diamonds and platinum. De Beers, which runs the global diamond cartel under the marketing slogan "a diamond is forever", spends $200m a year on promoting diamond jewellery worldwide. It is also testing the sale of diamonds branded with the De Beers name in tiny script that can be read only by microscope. Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), a sister company of De Beers, is equally insistent on the need for marketing to promote the sale of platinum, if only because jewellery accounts for 44 per cent of demand. "Platinum jewellery needs constant promotional support," Barry Davison, Amplats' managing director, told the Chamber of Mines annual meeting last month. Can the same sort of promotion work for gold? Some South African gold mine executives remain sceptical. Tom Dale, managing director of Gold Fields, says gold producers should focus on lifting restrictions on gold trading, such as those in South Africa; promoting the monetary role of gold; and continuing to press central banks not to dump their stocks. "I don't believe our industry should do jewellery marketing," he says. "If you think you can get a lot of money together and market gold, you're in for a shock," Mr Dale says. However, there are converts to the idea of adding value to South African gold and exploiting the country's position as the dominant producer. Mr Godsell's Anglogold, the world's largest gold mining company, has dipped its toe in the water by promising to expand its gold marketing activities and launching a gold jewellery design competition called "Riches of Africa". Last year 800m people bought gold, Mr Godsell said at the launch of the competition, and 1.6bn items of gold jewellery were sold around the world. Harmony, the independent gold mining company, has gone one step further by setting up its own small gold refinery and producing branded gold bars for sale through LG Group of South Korea and other traders, in the hope of earning a premium price for its output. However, the response has been disappointing, perhaps because Harmony, unlike the big Rand Refinery that processes the rest of the country's gold output, has no hallmark from the London Bullion Market Association. In South Africa the most bullish gold marketer of all is Sarah Da Vanzo, the American director of Consolidated Bullion, a newly formed marketing subsidiary of the Kebble family's Consolidated African Mines. Ms Da Vanzo points out that consumers already differentiate between various types of gold bar, with Johnson Matthey bullion preferred in India and Degussa or Swiss brands favoured elsewhere. Some bars, such as those made by Pamp, are adorned with a variety of chic holograms. Swiss banks, Ms Da Vanzo says, simply melt down gold from the Rand Refinery and rebrand it. "Gold in itself is a commodity, but gold as it is traded in the world is not a commodity because it has been manufactured," she says. Her solution is part technology, part marketing. High-value 24 or 22-carat gold for jewellery can be treated to make it harder and less liable to scratch, and gold can be made brittle so a large amount can be broken up into convenient units. She demonstrates with an object that looks and feels like a very heavy bar of chocolate. As for marketing, the key is to sell the "emotional cachet" of Africa and the image of a hot sun long associated with gold. Ms Da Vanzo promises to launch an "African" brand of gold soon but accepts that it will take time before her ideas are embraced by the gold mines. From Financial Times