Ever wondered how you can move gold reserves from one country to another? Best ask De Nederlandsche Bank or Dutch Central Bank (DNB) who, in a complex operation taking several months, removed 86 tonnes of the precious metal from the US and Canada.

What prompted this move?

The operation, which took place between March and August of this year, was undertaken out of concerns the bank has about “increasing geopolitical unrest”.

DNB said gold reserves held in London could be traded more easily than those held in New York and Ottawa making it the quickest way to deploy in a crisis situation.

“With this step, we have improved the deployability of the gold reserves. We assume that we will never need to deploy the gold, but it is nevertheless necessary to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,”

Laurent Schwartz, president of the Paris-based National Gold Counter, which facilitates gold trading in France, told AFP that the “current political context in the United States might also push certain central banks into favouring other storage locations”.

The London market is the deepest and most liquid, said Schwartz, allowing central banks to more easily lend their gold there to other banking institutions.

John Plassard, an analyst at Cite Gestion Private Bank, warned that if other central banks followed suit, it could damage confidence in the United States.

At the beginning of the year, there were concerns raised in Germany about the security of their central bank's reserves in New York. For now, however, the Deutsche Bundesbank has decided not to shift its reserves away from New York.

“The New York Fed is and remains an important storage site for our gold,” the bank told public TV station ARD in January.

How did DNB move 86 tonnes of gold between countries?

The transfer was divided into three distinct parts.

• Twenty seven tonnes of physical gold bars were moved from New York and Ottawa to Zeist in the Netherlands.
• A similar quantity and quality was then moved to London, with no need to melt the bars down.
• The rest of the transfer involved selling gold in New York and repurchasing it in London.

“By combining buying and selling and physical transport, the risks associated with physically moving a large quantity of gold have been spread,” said a representative of the DNB on Wednesday.

Status of Dutch gold reserves

The total Dutch gold stock was 612.4 tonnes at the end of 2025 and has been valued at €72.2 billion. 

• Before the deployment, the DNB held 31.3% of its gold in New York and 19.7% in Ottawa.
• After the move both countries account for 18.5% of the Dutch gold reserve.
• The DNB's share of gold in London has increased from 18.1% to 32.1% after the move.
• The DNB now holds 30.8% of its reserves in the Netherlands.

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