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Wednesday, May 8, 2013

German Automaker Reportedly Hoarding As Much Physical Silver As it Can Acquire

...and y'all can't build a car with paper silver IOUs.

February 15, 2013 By

Last month we posted a report (which subsequently went viral) from an Apple contractor who claimed that Apple has delayed production on the new 27″ iMacs due to an industrial silver shortage in China.

New signs of an extremely tight wholesale physical silver market have now emerged, as a first-hand account has revealed that one of the largest and most famous German automakers is hoarding massive amounts of physical silver inside one of the most secure vaults in Zurich, Switzerland.

Financial writer Byron King, who viewed the massive German automaker’s silver hoard in Zurich stated:

Why does the German company store dozens of pallets of silver in a secure vault deep in the mountains of Switzerland? It’s simple, really. So that the metal is there when the car maker needs it. As one purchasing manager explained later in my travels, “For some metals, like silver, there’s no such thing as ‘just in time’ delivery anymore.

In other words, this German company buys silver when it’s available. In fact, the company buys as much as it can acquire. Then it stores and stockpiles the material in a vault in the mountains of Switzerland, right next to the pope’s gold.


Ted Butler’s long anticipated panic buying & stockpiling of physical silver by industrial users appears to be gaining momentum.


King begins the narrative by explaining that he was recently given a tour of one of the largest private vaults in Zurich, Switzerland, the same vault that houses the Vatican’s massive gold hoard:
Last summer, I visited a storage vault dug deep into solid rock and buried in the hills north of Zurich, Switzerland. It’s a massive complex, right down the road from a Swiss Army base (and that’s no accident). You can enter this facility only by prior appointment, because the Swiss customs department has to do a background check on you. The Swiss are very thorough, you may have heard.
Source: Daily Resource Hunter
Source: Daily Resource Hunter

The vault is constructed with huge steel beams and enclosed by thick, reinforced concrete walls. Accompanied by an armed guard, you have to walk down a long, sloping set of corridors and then take an elevator to get to the deep levels. Heck, it’s like visiting a secure, military command bunker — of which I’ve seen a few in the course of my life’s journey. Finally, after a hike, you arrive at the business end of this facility.

This is no fly-by-night, rent-a-locker storage operation just off the interstate. It’s world-class. It’s a Swiss Fort Knox. In fact, in one zone of the vault, the Vatican keeps its gold. Seriously. As the vault manager told me, “Ja, de pope. He puts his faith in God. But he keeps his gold in Switzerland.”


King states that adjacent to the vault storing the Pope’s gold was a vault loaded down with physical stockpiles of silver hoarded by a German automaker:
In another zone of the same complex, a German automaker — a household name whose motorcars are revered across the world — stores industrial quantities of silver, and I mean a LOT of it. Here’s a photo of just a few pallets that belong to the German company.
German automaker silver hoard
Source: Daily Resource Hunter
These pallets cover the floor of a large room and are loaded down with innumerable 22-pound bags (10 kilograms, actually) of .999 fine silver. There’s way more silver than what you see in the photo, but it’s among the few pictures I was allowed to take. Read more from SD>