Citing increasing geopolitical unrest, the Dutch central bank moved 86 tonnes of its gold reserves from the United States and Canada to London between March and August. The transfer boosted the share of gold held in the UK to 32.1 percent, aiming to improve deployability during a crisis.
The central bank of the Netherlands executed a redistribution of its precious metals, shifting 86 tonnes of gold out of North America and into European storage. De Nederlandsche Bank confirmed the operation moved 86 tonnes of its gold reserves from the United States and Canada to London. The bank pointed directly to increasing geopolitical unrest as the primary driver behind the physical and administrative relocation.
Resilience, Preparedness, and the €72.2 Billion Total Stock
At the close of 2025, the total Dutch gold stock amounted to 612.4 tonnes, carrying a valuation of €72.2 billion, or US$83.7 billion, according to official figures released by the institution. While leadership maintains that an emergency deployment remains unlikely, bank officials stressed that the reallocation is a necessary operational precaution to strengthen resilience and preparedness.
“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,” said DNB President Olaf Sleijpen.
Gold reserves held in London could be traded more easily than those held in New York and Ottawa, according to the central bank. Storing a larger portion of the national reserve in the British capital makes it the quickest for DNB to deploy in a crisis situation compared to previous storage arrangements in New York and Ottawa.
How the DNB Redistributed Its Vault Holdings Across Four Nations
The operation transformed the geographic footprint of the Dutch reserve portfolio between March and August, said the bank. Before the deployment, the Dutch bank held 31.3 percent of its gold in New York and 19.7 percent in Ottawa. Following the completion of the project, each country accounted for 18.5 percent of the Dutch gold reserve.
Conversely, the share of gold held in London increased from 18.1 percent to 32.1 percent. The bank still holds 30.8 percent of its gold in the Netherlands.
Logistical Safeguards and the Mechanics of the Zeist Transfer
The transfer was carried out partially by buying and selling and partly by physically transferring gold, said the bank, successfully spreading the risks associated with physically moving a large quantity of gold.
The bank moved more than 27 tonnes of physical gold from the United States and Canada to Zeist. To avoid the logistical complications of melting down gold bars, the exact same quantity of gold was moved from Zeist to London.
Market Analysis and International Context
Laurent Schwartz, president of the Paris-based National Gold Counter, which facilitates gold trading in France, said central banks had been moving their reserves around for about a decade. Schwartz told AFP that the current political context in the United States might also push certain central banks into favouring other storage locations when managing sovereign assets.
Schwartz emphasized that the London market is the deepest and most liquid, making it easier to deploy in times of crisis and allowing central banks to more easily lend their gold there to other banking institutions. John Plassard, an analyst at Cite Gestion Private Bank, told AFP that the Dutch move was intended for there to be more immediate availability in the event of a crisis.
Plassard noted that for the moment, it was a fairly one-off move, but 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. However, the Bundesbank has decided for the moment not to shift its reserves away from New York, telling public TV station ARD in January that the New York Fed is and remains an important storage site for our gold.
