Products

Silver

From jewellery to circuit boards

With qualities such as strength, ductility and resistance to temperature changes, the precious metals silver is very important to society. While more than half of all silver produced globally goes to the electrical and electronics industries, the jewellery industry is also an important end-user. Silver is also the metal that conducts heat and electricity best, and is used for such things as electrical contacts, high-capacity batteries and electronic circuit boards in mobile telephones and computers. The metal is also used in solar cells, aircraft, satellites and for plating other materials. In the past, silver was used in photographs, but as digital photography is used more and more this application for silver has decreased significantly.

In several of our mines we extract ore that contains major quantities of silver, which is an important bimetal in our production processes. We produce pure silver in the form of granules by pouring molten silver through a sieve into cold water at our smelters in Rönnskär and Harjavalta.

Among the advantages of granules are ease of weighing and handling. The purity of our silver is at least 99.99 per cent at both plants. Around one quarter of the silver processed at Rönnskär is recovered from electronic scrap. In all, we produce around 600,000 kg of silver per year.

Chemical symbol: Ag
Appearance: White
Melting point: 961.93 °C
Boiling point: 2,212 °C

the finest silver in the jewellery industry is known as Sterling Silver, and is 92.5 per cent pure. The chemical symbol AG comes from the Latin word argentum, which not only means silver, but also money.

Silver mines:
The Boliden area
Garpenberg
Tara
Aitik

Silver smelters:
Rönnskär
Harjavalta