Agee Gold Refiners, formerly known a Autoriders Industries discontinued its operation of the Limouzine busses since the project was not viable. Due to which the company changed its line of business from automotive to precious metal.
The company has set up India's first private sector gold refinery at Shirpur, Maharashtra at an estimated cost of Rs 257 crore on the growing demand for the metals. The refinery has an installed capacity of 217 tonnes for gold and a similar capacity for silver. The refinery has been set up using imported equipment from Singapore. The furnaces are from Australia and New Zealand, while the laboratories are from US. The plant is equipped to cater to a wide range of value added end products like TT and kilo bars, wafers, coins and other intermediates. Refining of gold and silver will involve two-stage process. In the first stage, impurities will be removed with the help of chlorine for gold and oxygen for silver and in the second stage, which is an electrolytic process, contaminants will be removed bringing the gold to a 99.99% purity.
The company has also set up a full fledged distribution system wherein it has built its own airstrip to transport its products to its buyers. A most modern and convenient marketing set up has been established using HTE latest technology for immediate order processing. It will flash on its web site 'www.aggeegold.com' real time rates on the basis of which Zee Gold's designated preferred buyers can make their online spot purchases.
It has also joined hands with the Essel group to use the Zee brand to market their gold. To be called Zee Gold, the yellow metal will be available in both 10-tola bars and in shots. Zee will get a royalty of 20% of the net profit for the brand usage.
While the company has targeted at refining 10% of the total gold imports, it has not yet finalised its plans on refining the huge quantity of old jewellery that already exists in the country.
In the fiscal 2001, the company has completed the precious metal refinery project in the record time of about one year. The plant was inaugrated in Mar.'01. It also alloted 50,00,000 equity shares of Rs 10/- each on preferential basis at a premium of Rs 152/- per share.
During the year 2002, the name of the company was changed to Shirpur Gold Refinery Ltd.