Wells Fargo has concluded a deal to store some of the bank's precious metals at the Wyoming Reserve secure storage facility in Casper, Wyoming, underscoring a broader shift in how major financial institutions manage the storage of physical assets.
The agreement positions the 70,000-square-foot building at 170 Star Lane — formerly home to the Casper Star-Tribune newspaper — as a critical property in the institutional precious metals supply chain.
It also demonstrates that purpose-built, high-security industrial facilities in secondary markets can attract blue-chip tenants. Large banks and bullion dealers routinely outsource precious metals storage to third-party vault operators that meet exacting standards for security, insurance, chain-of-custody controls and regulatory compliance — requirements that conventional bank branches cannot satisfy, according to Josh Phair, co-founder and CEO of the Wyoming Reserve.
Winning that business from one of the nation's largest financial institutions validates the facility's design, operational rigor and emerging role as a regional institutional hub, Phair said in a statement.
The property is located in a federally designated "opportunity zone," a program that allows investors to defer and reduce taxes on capital gains by reinvesting those gains into qualified funds.
Wyoming Reserve previously launched two opportunity zone funds to raise about $565 million as a way for investors to own gold and silver investment funds on a tax-deferred basis, according to the firm's Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Wyoming Reserve also recently received a Foreign Trade Zone designation, enabling clients to defer, reduce or eliminate certain customs duties on imported and exported metals. The Wyoming government has selected the facility to store precious metals on the state's behalf.
Beyond vault storage, Wyoming Reserve offers buying, selling, transportation, fulfillment and metal availability services for commercial and industrial clients.
That full-service model targets a market typically dominated by facilities concentrated in New York, London and Zurich — giving Casper an unlikely but growing foothold in global precious metals infrastructure, according to Phair.