Seller edition for copper and zinc–lead concentrates
Valyria checks every concentrate sale against its contract, lot by lot. It reads each weight, moisture and assay certificate, works out what every provisional and final invoice should say, runs the assay-exchange and umpire deadlines, and drafts the letters your commercial manager signs.
Sources: Guoxin Securities · Crux Investor · Cochilco via Mining Reporters
Illustrative lot. The 0.25-point limit and 60-day deadline come from filed contracts.
A lot is paid at least twice. The first payment rests on the seller's own numbers. The final one rests on agreed assays, an averaged price and deductions, each reached on its own deadline.
The buyer typically pays about 90% on the seller's weights, assays and the metal price at shipment. The balance waits for the final invoice, weeks or months later, and that is where the arguments happen.
Sources: Thompson Creek–Glencore agreement · Gold Resource purchase contract
Each side assays its own sample and swaps results by a deadline. In one filed contract, a party without a certificate by the 60th day after the samples were sealed must accept the other side's number.
Inside the limit, the two assays are averaged. Outside it, an umpire laboratory decides and the furthest party pays. On a 10,000 dmt parcel, a 0.25-point copper gap is about $331,000 at the 2026 average LME price of $13,235 a tonne. The parcel is illustrative; the limit and price are sourced.
Sources: Sterlite assay clause · Cochilco via Mining Reporters
One Freeport-McMoRan contract raises the minimum copper deduction from 1.0 to 1.1 units when the grade falls below 24%. In Chile, 64.4% of contracts by tonnage carried an arsenic penalty in 2018–2020.
Sources: Freeport-McMoRan agreement · Cochilco
The benchmark treatment charge settled at $0 a tonne for 2026, down from $21.25. By July, Antofagasta was selling on spot-indexed terms with a floor. Every spreadsheet built around one annual number now has to change.
Sources: Guoxin Securities · Mining Reporters
Valyria turns a contract and a stack of certificates into an invoice you can check, a clock that never sleeps and a letter ready to sign. It is built for a commercial team of a few people, not a trading floor.
What Valyria is not: a marketplace, a trader, a trading system or a law firm. It takes no position in any deal.
Start with a fixed-fee Settlement Review of your last twelve months of lots. The fee is credited in full against your first year.
For one operation selling up to 150,000 dmt of concentrate a year.
For producers selling 150,000 to 600,000 dmt across sites or products.
Over 600,000 dmt a year, or for traders and smelters checking inbound lots.
A fixed-fee look at your last twelve months of lots, priced by volume. If you subscribe, the whole fee comes off your first year.
Why the price holds. On the illustrative 10,000 dmt parcel above, one 0.25-point assay gap is worth about $331,000. The Mine plan costs about 18% of that single gap.
The small print. Prices are in US dollars, before taxes, and banded by dry metric tonnes (dmt) of concentrate under management a year. Plans are fixed subscriptions; we take no share of the money a settlement recovers.
A mine selling concentrate is paid on numbers it does not fully control: the weight and moisture a surveyor certifies, the assays two laboratories exchange, a monthly average of the LME price, and penalty scales for arsenic and other impurities. The contract sets the rules. Whether each invoice follows them is usually checked by hand.
2026 raised the stakes. The benchmark treatment charge settled at zero, spot charges went deeply negative, new contracts moved to index-linked formulas, and copper set records. Every hundredth of a percent on an assay certificate is worth more than it was.
Large traders run trading systems and operations teams for this. Valyria gives the commercial team of a mid-tier producer the same control, with the arithmetic done by deterministic code and every letter signed by a person.
AI reads the documents. Deterministic code works out every number, and each line shows the clause and certificate behind it.
Valyria drafts. Your team decides, signs and sends, and the log shows who did what and when.
We are not a trader or a marketplace. We never take a position in your deals or sell your data to the other side.
Starting with mid-tier copper and zinc–lead producers selling to traders and smelters in PeruChileMexico
I grew up around my family's industrial electrical distribution business. When I started working in it at seventeen, most of my time went to paper: invoices, price lists, spreadsheets and supplier letters. I learnt how much of a company's money is decided by documents nobody has time to read properly.
Concentrate settlement is the sharpest version of that problem I have found. The certificate is on file, the contract says exactly what it is worth, and the deadline is written into the clause. A mine can still give away a six-figure sum on one parcel because nobody put the three side by side in time.
Valyria does that for every lot. The arithmetic is deterministic, every line points to its clause and certificate, and a person on your team signs anything that leaves the building. If you run settlements for a mine or a trading book and think I have something wrong, I would like to hear it.
— Shriman