For miners & cooperatives
Get verified. Get seen. Get paid on your material's actual worth.
Artisanal and small-scale production is priced down for a reason that has nothing to do with the metal: nobody downstream can prove where it came from. Verification and a document record close that gap — and they cost nothing to start.
What the current chain costs you
Every step between a producer and a refinery takes a margin, and most of those margins are payment for uncertainty rather than for work.
You sell to whoever turns up
A producing cooperative typically has one realistic buyer: the aggregator who comes to the site. There is no second quote to compare against, so there is no way to know whether the discount being offered is the market or simply what this buyer prefers to pay.
A published intent is seen by every verified buyer on the platform at once — refiners and trading houses included. You are not obliged to accept any of it. But you find out what your material is actually worth before you sell it.
The discount widens on the way up the chain
Each intermediary takes a margin, and each one is priced for the risk of not knowing where the material came from. That uncertainty is expensive, and it is paid for at the bottom of the chain — by you.
Verification removes part of that risk before anyone quotes. A buyer looking at a verified cooperative with a document record is pricing metal, not pricing the chance that the paperwork is fiction.
Nobody can prove where the material came from
A refiner has to answer, to its own compliance function and its auditors, where every intake originated. If the answer is unclear, the parcel is refused — or accepted at a discount that reflects the doubt.
The order record travels with the trade: origin, assay, export licence, tax receipt, whatever the corridor requires, filed against that parcel by the party who holds it and visible to the buyer as it arrives.
You are asked for the same documents every time
Each new buyer starts from zero: company registration, licence, identity of the person signing, and a fresh round of scepticism about all three.
Verification is done once, at the company. After that your status travels with you across the platform, and your representative carries a credential a counterparty can check on the spot.
Verification is the equaliser
The point of checking every company is not to keep small producers out. It is that once everyone is checked, size stops being the thing a buyer has to fall back on.
- The same check for everyone
- A two-person cooperative and a refining group complete the same business verification. Registration, ownership and control, and sanctions screening — there is no lighter check for smaller companies, and no faster one for larger ones.
- The same board
- Your supply appears on the marketplace beside everyone else's, sorted by terms rather than by the size of the company posting them. Buyers filter by commodity, purity, volume and origin. Not by whether they have heard of you.
- The same record
- The document space, versioning and the audit trail are on every account on every tier, including the free one. Integrity is not a paid feature — a record only some counterparties can produce would be worth nothing to anyone.
- The same protection
- Your legal identity is not published to browsers. Buyers see your verification status, country and how long you have been registered; full detail is exchanged when an order binds you both.
Responsible sourcing, without being designed out of it
Due-diligence requirements are often experienced by producers as a reason they were excluded. The frameworks themselves say the opposite.
Formalisation, not exclusion
OECD guidance is explicit that legitimate artisanal production should be brought into formal supply chains rather than cut out of them. Disengagement pushes production into informal channels; it does not improve conditions at the mine.
CRAFT and progressive improvement
The CRAFT code recognises that ASM producers improve over time and allows for engagement while that improvement is under way. A record of what was documented, and when, is what makes progress legible to a buyer.
Per-source, never pooled
Where a buyer fills one requirement from several producers, each source keeps its own separate record. Chain-of-custody schemes require sources to be traceable individually — merged lot records defeat the purpose.
Your evidence, not our certificate
Nelum does not certify origin or quality, and would be worth less if it pretended to. What it does is hold the evidence you and your counterparty produce, in a form that neither side can quietly alter afterwards.
Read more on the OECD five-step framework and how it applies to material from conflict-affected and high-risk areas.
Four steps, and you are on the board
Nothing here needs a consultant, a lawyer, or a trip to a capital city.
- 01
Register the company
The company is the account, not the person. One or two people can run it; roles decide who is allowed to commit it.
Free. No card, no subscription to start.
- 02
Complete verification
Registration documents, the authorised representative's identity, and a verified mobile number. Screening runs in the background.
Done once, then it travels with you.
- 03
Post what you hold
Commodity, quantity, purity, origin, and the price basis — a discount to a named benchmark, or an absolute figure. Set an expiry so a stale offer stops attracting attention.
One-off or recurring, if you produce steadily.
- 04
Answer offers, keep the record
Accept, decline, or leave them. When you accept, an order opens and the document space begins: upload what you have, and the buyer can ask for anything missing.
Both parties confirm when it is finished.
Practical questions
- We are small. Is there a minimum volume?
- No. There is no floor on quantity and no minimum trade size, because the buyers on the platform are not all refiners — trading houses and exporters buy in the volumes producers actually hold.
- Our internet is unreliable and we work from phones.
- The platform works on a phone. Documents can be photographed and uploaded from the field, and there is nothing that has to be completed in one sitting — an intent or an upload can be finished later.
- We do not have every document a buyer asks for.
- Then you say so. Requests are visible to both sides with the reason attached, so a missing document is a conversation rather than a silent failure. Buyers in this market know what ASM paperwork looks like.
- Can our export agent act for us?
- Yes — under a written mandate you grant and can revoke, which records exactly what they may do: introduce, negotiate, or negotiate and sign. Anything they post in your name says so.
- What does it cost?
- Nelum charges a company subscription for the paid tiers, and never a percentage of what you sell — we are not a party to your trade and take no cut of it. Verification, the record and the audit trail are on the free tier too.
- Who sees our production volumes?
- Only what you publish, and only to verified companies. You can also send an intent privately to named connections instead of posting it publicly.
Register your cooperative
Verification is free, done once, and travels with you. Post what you hold and let verified buyers come to the terms rather than to the relationship.