Singapore's plans to become a gold and precious metals hub took a key step forward Thursday.

Last month, Metalor Technologies opened its refining plant in Tuas, Singapore. The facility offers a complete range of refining services from evaluation of scrap to bullion production and is estimated to have a production capacity of up to 150 tonnes a year.

"We are located in the middle of the two largest gold consumer markets, China and India. We want to take advantage of this geographic location and certainly we are looking forward to getting metal from these two countries but also exporting, through our Singapore customers, metal to these two countries."