We buy no third-party material. That is the whole first line of defence.

The simplest control we have

Quintel does not buy third-party material. Every tonne of copper, gold, silver, manganese and bauxite the group sells came out of a Quintel mine, was moved by Quintel or its contracted logistics providers, and can be traced to a mining block and a month of production.

That single decision eliminates most of the supply chain risk that dominates responsible sourcing discussions in this industry. There is no ore purchasing desk, no toll treatment of unknown material, no blending of bought concentrate into our own. It also costs the group volume and margin, and it is the reason our marketing entities are smaller than they could be.

What remains after that decision is our own upstream supply chain — the goods and services we buy, the contractors we employ, and the conduct of everyone who works on our sites. That is where the remaining risk sits and where the due diligence is directed.

Cobalt, and why it needs its own answer

Cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo carries specific, extensively documented risks: child labour in artisanal mining, hazardous informal working conditions, and the entry of artisanally mined material into formal supply chains through intermediary buyers.

Quintel does not claim these risks are absent from the region. They are present, they are serious, and any producer saying otherwise is either uninformed or being careless with the truth. What the group can evidence is what happens inside its own operation and its own supply chain.

Gold

All group gold comes from one mine, is poured on site as doré, and is refined at a single refinery accredited on the LBMA Good Delivery List. No third-party material of any kind enters that chain. This is the shortest possible chain of custody for gold and it is deliberate.

The operation is audited annually against the LBMA Responsible Gold Guidance through its refinery relationship, with the OECD guidance as the governing framework. There is no artisanal or small-scale mining within the Asankran mining lease. Where informal mining occurs on adjacent ground, the group engages through the district authority and supports formalisation rather than pursuing eviction.

Copper

Copper is subject to less prescriptive supply chain regulation than cobalt or gold, and that gap is closing. Quintel applies the same chain-of-custody controls to copper cathode and concentrate as it does to cobalt: certificate of origin on every lot identifying the producing operation, traceability to a production campaign, and independent inspection of weights and assays at load port.

Both cathode brands are LME registered, which requires independent sampling, assay and approval against BS EN 1978:1998 Cu-CATH-1 and creates an external check on product identity that the group considers valuable beyond its commercial function.

Our own supply chain

The group buys from approximately 3,100 suppliers across nine countries, ranging from an international OEM supplying haul trucks to a village cooperative supplying vegetables to a mine camp. A single due diligence standard applied to all of them would be either unworkably heavy at the bottom or meaninglessly light at the top.

Suppliers are therefore tiered by risk, using spend, sector and country as inputs. Tier-one suppliers — 396 of them, accounting for 84% of spend — are subject to written contracts incorporating the Supplier Code of Conduct, a right of audit, screening for sanctions and beneficial ownership, and a labour standards assessment. Higher-risk categories, principally labour-intensive services such as security, catering, cleaning and earthmoving, receive on-site assessment regardless of spend.

In FY2025 the group conducted 148 supplier assessments. Nineteen found non-conformances requiring corrective action, most commonly relating to working hours, wage payment timing and personal protective equipment provision. Sixteen were remediated within the agreed period. Three relationships were terminated.

Due diligence activity

Modern slavery

The group publishes an annual modern slavery and human trafficking statement covering all entities and tier-one suppliers. The highest-risk categories identified are labour brokerage in construction, migrant labour in logistics, and recruitment fee practices in service contracting.

Recruitment fees charged to workers are prohibited across the group and in supplier contracts. Where a fee is found to have been charged, the group requires reimbursement to the worker by the supplier and verifies it, rather than treating termination of the contract as a sufficient remedy — terminating the contract leaves the worker out of pocket and out of a job.

Two instances were identified in FY2025, both at construction contractors at Fatala, involving 34 workers in total. Reimbursement of US$41,200 was verified in both cases.