Baird & Co.

London Bullion Dealer and Refiner Since 1967

Baird & Co. is a privately owned UK precious metals dealer and refiner. Tony Baird founded the business in 1967, the year the South African Krugerrand first reached the market, and it was incorporated as Baird & Co. Limited in 1988 (Companies House no. 02269558, England and Wales). Customers visit a retail showroom and trade counter at 48 Hatton Garden in London, opened in 1987 and refurbished in 2017, and the company's refining and manufacturing divisions occupy a 30,000 sq ft high-security site in Beckton, east London. A Singapore office at The Central on Eu Tong Sen Street has handled the firm's Asian business since 2012.

Baird & Co. has been a full member of the London Bullion Market Association since September 2000. It became an Official Partner of The Royal Mint in 2016 and received the Queen's Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category in 2018.

The dealing side covers cast and minted investment bars in gold, silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium, together with bullion coins and numismatic pieces. Rhodium is a particular signature: Baird produced the world's first commercial rhodium investment bar in 2012 and partnered with Tuvalu in 2018 on the world's first legal tender rhodium coin. Because the firm refines as well as deals, it also makes coin blanks, jewellery alloys in a range of carats, and industrial precious metal products, and offers toll refining, vaulting, unallocated metal accounts, SIPP and SSAS pension products, and scrap purchasing. Its customer base spans private investors alongside the jewellery and industrial trades it has supplied since the 1970s.

From the First UK Krugerrands to Rhodium Pioneering

Tony Baird began dealing coins full time in 1967, the year the South African Krugerrand was launched, and was the first dealer in the UK to trade them. By the mid-1970s the business operated from a permanent office in Stratford, east London, quoting buying and selling prices to banks, coin dealers, jewellers and other bullion merchants. A private client business followed in 1975, and in 1977 the firm became the first private contributor of coin pricing to the Reuters Monitor System, maintaining its Reuters page BACO for more than two decades.

The application of 15% VAT to UK gold coins on 1 April 1982 collapsed the domestic gold coin market and pushed the company to diversify. Refining and processing operations had already begun in 1979, producing gold alloys for the jewellery trade and toll refining for clients, and the firm moved further into jewellery manufacturing and gold bar production through the 1980s. Growth in scrap trading led to the opening of the flagship Hatton Garden retail and trade counter in 1987, and the company was incorporated as Baird & Co. Limited in 1988. The VAT on gold coins was removed on 1 January 2000.

The company moved to larger premises in 1996 to expand production and refining capacity, and in 1997 launched an e-commerce website described at the time as one of the first dynamic commercial sites in the UK. Full membership of the LBMA came in September 2000, and in 2008 refining and manufacturing moved to a 30,000 sq ft high-security unit in Beckton, east London. Between 2011 and 2013 the firm appeared in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100, Top Track 250 and Profit Track 100 league tables. The year 2012 brought both the opening of the Singapore office and the release of the world's first commercial rhodium investment bar.

Tony Baird died on 12 April 2015, and the business remained in private ownership. The years since have brought further milestones: Official Partner status with The Royal Mint in 2016, refurbishment of the Hatton Garden headquarters in 2017, and in 2018 both the Queen's Award for Enterprise for International Trade and a partnership with Tuvalu to issue the world's first legal tender rhodium coin, the Tuvalu South Sea Dragon. Equipment upgrades across refining, production and manufacturing followed in 2023, and a redesigned e-commerce site launched in 2024.