A hundred tons of gold, or about 8 thousand bars, has been recently delivered from the Bank of England to Poland. This was the largest movement of precious metal between the central banks of different countries.

A week and a half ago, G4S International Logistics began the gold repatriation operation. The gold bars were transferred in armoured trucks under a police escort, accompanied by helicopters from above. Then 20 boxes of the yellow metal were loaded in a Boeing 737 freighter plane.

G4S International Logistics arranged eight air transfers. During this time, a hundred tons of the precious metal worth more than $5 billion was delivered to the National Bank of Poland. At the beginning of last week, the central bank announced that its gold repatriation operation had been completed. The regulator reported that part of Poland’s gold reserves had been transferred back from the Bank of England and now the reserves would be stored in the NBP Treasury in Warsaw.

According to the bank's governor, about half of Poland’s gold reserves (123 tons) are still stored in the UK. Over 2018-2019, the central bank bought 125.7 tons of gold, boosting its reserves to 228.6 tons in total.

The storage of Poland’s gold reserve in foreign banks dates back to World War II. Previously, the country's national reserve was split into three parts and stored in the Bank of Canada in Ottawa, the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, and in the Bank of England in London.