My Silver Collection 11 - The UMICORE Silver Bar!
For this new edition of the "My Silver Collection" series I want to show one of the few bars I have in my collection.
The UMICORE 100 Gr Silver Bar!
It is not a very special bar like the ones I have shown previously with Chinese dragons. On one side of the bar it has the name and logo of the Belgian mining company UMICORE. Also the weight and purity grade of the silver contained in the bar.
I like the way they managed to differentiate the two parts of the logo. By the way, the other side of the bar is plain without any markings.
This is the only UMICORE product I have and I actually bought it without knowing it came from that company. This Belgian company has ongoing relationships with child slavery in cobalt mining. More than 60% of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Belgian occupation of the area that later became the Democratic Republic of Congo started in 1908. UMICORE was founded in 1909 under the name of Union Minière du Haut Katanga. It is too much coincidence in the dates knowing the great natural and mineral wealth that existed and still exists in that area. Imagine that while that occupation lasted, due to the abuses and exploitation, the population of the Congo decreased by almost half. And despite the "independence" in 1960 that occupation has never ended as such.
This photo below was taken in 1958 in the city of Brussels, Belgium. To place ourselves in the moment, in 1958 it was already more than 10 years since the end of World War II.
For these reasons I don't buy any UMICORE products, or at least I consciously try not to. And in general, I try to avoid almost everything that has to do with Belgium. It's a country I've visited and, thanks to what I've seen and experienced there, I can say that I don't like it very much. And for the record I have good Belgian friends, of course. Good people are everywhere.
Sorry for this half rant above but I get angry when child exploitation is involved. I cannot understand that in the middle of 2021 there still exists in this world someone who enslaves children.
I hope you (didn't) like the UMICORE silver bar and see you in the next silver piece!
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