For buyers

Stop spending months on sellers who cannot perform

Refiners and industrial buyers lose more time to unqualified counterparties than to any other part of sourcing. Post your requirement once, and let verification do the filtering before the first call rather than after the third meeting.

Five ways a sourcing desk loses a quarter

Each of these is ordinary in this market. None of them is a failure of diligence by the buyer — they are failures of the information a buyer has to work from.

Six intermediaries and no principal

An offer typically reaches a refining desk through a chain of people who each describe themselves as a mandate. Each forwards the last one's email. None can produce the company they claim to act for, and the parcel at the end of the chain frequently does not exist.

Here an offer comes from a company that has completed business verification — incorporation, ownership and control, beneficial owners, export licence — made by a named individual whose identity was checked, acting through a seat at that company. There is no chain. There is a counterparty.

Terms that move between the intent and the contract

Purity drifts down half a point. The assay tolerance widens. A delivery term changes and nobody flags it, because the contract was retyped by someone who was not in the negotiation.

The intent's terms and every answer to them — an acceptance, a partial take, a counter or a question — sit in one thread between the two companies, so both sides read the same terms when they write their own contract. Nelum drafts no agreement and witnesses no signature.

Documents that cannot be checked

Certificates of origin naming a mine nobody can locate. Self-issued assay certificates. Export permits covering a different consignment. By the time a document turns out to be worthless, the metal is usually in the air.

You can set out the documents you need as slots on your consignment, ask a linked party for what is missing with a note saying why, and see exactly what has been filed against each. Replacing a file does not overwrite the previous one, so a document that changed after you queried it reads as precisely that.

Paying against an assay you did not commission

The most expensive failure in doré is paying on a purity that was never independently established — where the only assay in the file was produced by the party being paid.

You can ask independent laboratories for quotes through a request for quotation on your consignment. Accepting a quote engages the laboratory as a party at the scope of its work: it sees only the lots it tests, and its report is filed on the consignment.

The review that comes two years later

Your compliance function, your auditor, or a tax authority asks how a specific parcel reached your refinery, who you bought it from, what you knew about its origin, and on what basis you accepted it.

The consignment record answers it: every document and version, every request and its note, every message, and every party's confirmation, retained for the periods anti-money-laundering law requires. Not a search through the mailbox of a trader who left last year.

What you post

A Letter of Intent that says what you actually want, in the terms this market uses. It is non-binding.

Product and quantity: The commodity and the quantity, with its unit, its basis — dry, wet or as is — and its tolerance.
Purity and origin: The specification, each element stated as typical, guaranteed, a minimum or a maximum, and the country of origin where you have one.
Delivery and shipping: Incoterms, load and discharge ports or a delivery point, the shipment window, whether partial shipments and transhipment are permitted, and packing.
Pricing basis: A fixed figure, or a benchmark with a differential above or below it. The differential is recorded as a term; the cash figure is agreed between you on the SPA.
Expiry: The date the intent leaves the board automatically, so it stops attracting offers once your requirement has moved on.
Your existing LOI: Attach the signed PDF and the assistant reads the terms out of it to fill the form for you to check. The letter stays with your company unless you choose to share it with the companies that answer.

Comparing what comes back

Offers on one requirement should be comparable at a glance. Most of the time they arrive as prose in six separate threads.

Every answer in one list

Answers to one intent are listed together: the company, the date, and what it said — an acceptance, the part of the quantity it would take, a counter with its price and terms, or a question — each opening its own thread.

You see who you would be dealing with

Each answer names the company and links to its page, which shows its verification status.

Private requirements stay private

Where you would rather not publish a requirement at all, send it to named connections only. It never appears on the public board.

When one requirement draws on several sources

Aggregating small-scale production into a refinery intake is normal. Aggregating its paperwork is not acceptable, and the distinction matters more than it first appears.

One requirement, several producers: A large requirement rarely comes from one small-scale source. Where it is filled from several, each producer can be invited to your consignment as a party, and sees only the lots it supplied.
Records stay per lot: Provenance, assay and shipping documents are filed per lot. Lots can be merged or split, and a merged lot carries all of its origins, so each source stays traceable separately, as OECD five-step due diligence and chain-of-custody schemes require.

What sellers see, and what they do not

Members of verified companies see your commercial terms in full — that is the point of posting. Unless you post without your name, they see your company, your country, your verification status and how long you have been registered.

They do not see your verification documents, your other requirements, the offers anyone else has made, or anything belonging to a consignment they are not party to. Knowing which refiner is seeking what volume, at what purity, on what schedule, is commercially valuable information — and none of it is published to companies that have not been checked.

Questions buyers ask

Do sellers see my legal name while I am browsing?: They see your company name, country, verification status and reference on the board — enough to decide whether to engage. You can also post without your name, and give it to one company you are talking to at a time.
Can I keep a requirement off the public board entirely?: Yes. Send it privately to named connections. It is visible only to the companies you choose, and nobody else can reach it — that restriction is enforced in the database, not in the interface.
Who can act for my company?: Each person acts through a seat with one role. A holder may do everything; a manager also edits the company and its seats; a trader posts and answers intents and works consignments; an operator works consignments and the company profile; a reader only reads. Nothing on Nelum binds your company to a deal.
How does settlement work?: However you and the seller agree. Bank transfer, letter of credit and documentary collection are arranged with your own banks. Nelum holds no funds, operates no wallets, verifies no settlement and is not an escrow agent.
What if a seller uploads the wrong document?: They can replace it. The new file becomes the next version and the earlier one stays on the record, so a correction is visible as a correction rather than an unexplained change.
What does it cost to buy here?: A company membership, monthly, with seats included — never a percentage of what you trade. Nelum is not a party to your transaction and takes no cut of it — see pricing.