Open data · critical minerals

Who holds the catalyst metals — and what happens when two countries mine four-fifths of them?

Platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium and osmium — the platinum-group metals, PGMs — are the six rarest useful elements on Earth: a few hundred tonnes a year, mined almost entirely from two geological freaks, South Africa's Bushveld Complex and Russia's Norilsk ores. They are catalysts first: the honeycomb in every car exhaust, the gauze that makes nitric acid for fertiliser and explosives, the reformer in the refinery, the anode in the hydrogen electrolyser. They are also the coating on the jet-engine blade, the layer in the hard disk, the capacitor on the circuit board, the pacemaker electrode, the wedding ring and the bar in the vault. In 2025 platinum ran its largest deficit on record — 1.44 million ounces — as South African supply fell, Chinese jewellers abandoned gold and investors bought; in January 2026 a Chinese futures frenzy drove it to $2,925 an ounce, and by October it had lost 44% and the market had flipped to surplus. Palladium, 81% of it burned in car exhausts and 44% of it Russian, is heading for its first surplus in fourteen years while Nornickel's output sinks to a twenty-year low and Washington's attempt to impose 240% duties on it was rejected by the International Trade Commission and is now under appeal. This page tracks where the PGMs are mined, smelted and refined, who consumes them, who can turn the supply off and who is building alternatives — using open data from USGS, BGS, the World Platinum Investment Council, Johnson Matthey and company disclosures. Built for the PGM chain — miners, refiners, recyclers, automakers and catalyst makers, glass, chemical and hydrogen producers, bullion dealers — and for geopolitics researchers and think tanks.

0of the world's platinum was mined in South Africa in 2025 (120 of ~170 t), which also holds ~83% of PGM reserves (USGS estimate)
0of the world's palladium came from Russia in 2025 (84 of ~190 t) — a supply the West tariffs, shuns and litigates but cannot sanction (USGS)
0platinum market deficit in 2025, the largest on record, before a forecast 265,000 oz surplus in 2026 as ETFs sold and Chinese jewellery collapsed (WPIC, September 2026)
0platinum's fall from its $2,925/oz record of 26 January 2026 to $1,649 on 20 October 2026 — still 70% above its 2024 average (NYMEX, USGS)
Interactive map

The platinum-group metals world map

The Bushveld, Great Dyke, Norilsk, Stillwater and Sudbury mines; the smelters and precious-metal refineries that turn their matte into sponge; the Western and Chinese refiners and recyclers; the mines idled by the palladium slump — and the projects coming on: Platreef, Marathon, Karo, Waterberg. Tap a marker for details; toggle layers below. Circle size ≈ scale of operation.

Mine Smelter / refinery / recycler Idled / closing Development project
The PGM map is really two places. Everything west of the Bushveld's Rustenburg–Mokopane arc and Zimbabwe's Great Dyke produces platinum-rich ore; Norilsk, Sudbury and Stillwater produce palladium-rich ore as a by-product of nickel and copper. Refining is just as concentrated: three South African precious-metal refineries, two Russian ones and a handful of plants in Britain, Germany, Belgium, the United States, Japan and China handle essentially all of the world's primary sponge.
Six metals, one reef

The platinum group, element by element

The six PGMs occur together, are separated together in the same refinery and are priced apart: platinum and palladium on exchanges, rhodium, iridium and ruthenium by dealer quote, osmium hardly at all. Each has a job silicon, steel and gold cannot do — and each market is small enough that one smelter outage or one futures launch moves it. Tap a metal or a form.

Upstream (ore, concentrate, matte) Midstream (refined metals) Downstream (products) Circular
Reef to catalytic converter — and back

The journey of an ounce of platinum

From a two-metre reef a kilometre under the Bushveld to the honeycomb in a hybrid's exhaust, the gauze in a nitric-acid plant or the bar in a Shanghai vault. Six stages, each with its own chokepoint — and the whole chain, from mine to refinery, runs through fewer than a dozen companies.

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Production & reserves

Where the platinum-group metals come from

Platinum and palladium mine production by country, 2025

Tonnes of metal, USGS estimates (world: platinum ~170 t, palladium ~190 t)
Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 (2025 figures are estimates). Platinum: South Africa 120 t (71%), Russia 20 t, Zimbabwe 18 t, Canada 5 t, United States 1.8 t, others 3.9 t — world 170 t, down from 179 t in 2024. Palladium: Russia 84 t (44%), South Africa 70 t (37%), Canada 16 t, Zimbabwe 15 t, United States 6.2 t, others 2.9 t — world 190 t, down from 217 t. South African output fell 9% on low palladium prices and deep-level costs; Russian output 6% on declining grades. Rhodium, not shown: 701,000 oz (21.8 t) in 2025, 81% South African (Johnson Matthey).

Reserves by country

Tonnes of platinum-group metals (world total >76,000 t)
Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026. South Africa holds about 63,000 t — 83% of the world — in the Merensky, UG2 and Platreef horizons of the Bushveld Complex; Russia 11,000 t at Norilsk and Kola; Zimbabwe 1,300 t on the Great Dyke; the United States 590 t at Stillwater; Canada 310 t. Reserves are not the constraint: the Bushveld could supply the world for a century. Depth, power, rail, labour and price are.

A decade of flat supply: all PGMs mined, world and the big two

Tonnes of platinum-group metals (all six, metal content) — world, South Africa and Russia, BGS 2014–2024
Source: BGS World Mineral Statistics (platinum group metals, mine). World output has been stuck at 440–470 t a year since 2015: South Africa swings with strikes (the five-month 2014 stoppage), power cuts (2020–23) and prices, Russia holds steady at 100–115 t and Zimbabwe creeps up to 39 t. The 2014 dip is the Rustenburg strike; the 2020 dip is COVID and Amplats' converter-plant explosion. The mining industry has added no net supply in a decade, which is why a 1.4 million-ounce deficit could open in a single year.
Explore where PGMs are mined, country by country since 1970, on the supply-chain map (BGS publishes no country series for refined PGMs, so the map shows the mine stage only) and in the Mineral Explorer.
Processing

The chokepoint is the refinery

PGM ore grades a few grams per tonne. Concentrating it to a matte, smelting that matte in a 60-megawatt furnace and then separating six chemically near-identical metals from each other and from nickel and copper takes months and a plant that only a handful of companies have ever built. South Africa has three precious-metal refineries, Russia two, and the rest of the world lives off their sponge plus what recyclers recover from scrapped catalysts and jewellery — about 140 t of platinum and palladium a year, a quarter of supply.

Processing geography

Three South African refineries, two Russian ones, the Western toll refiners and recyclers — and a Chinese chain growing on Russian feed

🇿🇦Rustenburg, Springs and Brakpan

Every ounce of South African PGM passes through one of three precious-metal refineries: Valterra Platinum's at Rustenburg (the former Anglo American Platinum, demerged on 31 May 2025 and listed in London on 2 June), Impala's at Springs and Sibanye-Stillwater's ex-Lonmin plant at Brakpan. Upstream sit the Waterval, Polokwane, Mortimer, Impala and Marikana smelters — each a single point of failure: Impala lost about 50,000 oz in 2026 to a furnace sulphur-dioxide stoppage, and Amplats' 2020 converter-plant explosion cut world platinum supply by a tenth for months. Zimbabwe's matte comes here too, from Zimplats' Selous smelter and Unki.

🇷🇺Norilsk, Monchegorsk and Krasnoyarsk

Nornickel's Norilsk–Talnakh mines and the Kola refinery at Monchegorsk produce the nickel-copper matte from which Krastsvetmet in Krasnoyarsk and EZOCM at Verkhnyaya Pyshma refine 44% of the world's palladium and 12% of its platinum. The London Platinum and Palladium Market withdrew Good Delivery status from both refiners in 2022, which does not stop the metal moving — virtually all Russian platinum now goes to China through Hong Kong, and Chinese refiners such as Sino-Platinum in Kunming and Jinchuan grow on it. Nornickel's 2026 guidance, 2.42–2.47 million oz of palladium, is its lowest in about twenty years as grades decline and the Nadezhda smelter cycles through maintenance.

🇬🇧The Western refiners and the recyclers

Johnson Matthey at Royston and Devon, Pennsylvania, Heraeus at Hanau, Umicore at Hoboken, BASF at Seneca, South Carolina, and Tanaka at Hiratsuka refine primary sponge on toll and, increasingly, recover metal from scrapped autocatalysts, jewellery and electronics: recycling supplied 1.67 million oz of platinum in 2025 (WPIC) and 3.1 million oz of palladium (Johnson Matthey), with recycled palladium heading for a four-year high in 2026 as the cars of the 2010s reach the scrapyard. The United States' own primary chain is one company — Sibanye-Stillwater's Montana mines, smelter at Columbus and refinery — which cut 700 jobs and idled Stillwater West in September 2024 and lost five weeks to a strike in September–October 2026.

🇨🇳China: the refiner of last resort

China mines almost nothing (6.8 t of PGMs in 2024, BGS) but has become the market's swing buyer and, for Russian metal, its refiner: Sino-Platinum Metals in Kunming, Jinchuan in Jinchang and Guiyan in Guiyang process imported matte, sponge and scrap, Chinese unwrought-platinum imports rose 17.8% in the first half of 2026 even as the price fell, and the Guangzhou Futures Exchange's platinum and palladium contracts — launched on 27 November 2025 and opened to foreign institutions on 28 September 2026 — now set the pace of the price in Asian hours. The 2025 Chinese jewellery boom (fabrication +56% to 589,000 oz) and the 2026 bust (−55%) both ran through this chain.

Sources: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026; Johnson Matthey PGM Market Report (May 2026: Russian trade flows, LPPM status, recycling); WPIC Platinum Quarterly Q2 2026 (recycling, smelter outages, Chinese imports); Nornickel 2025 production results and 2026 guidance; Valterra Platinum, Impala Platinum and Sibanye-Stillwater disclosures; LME statement on Nornickel (July 2026); SMM (Chinese imports); Mining Weekly (GFEX internationalisation, 25 September 2026); Platinum Guild International (2025 jewellery fabrication).

The platinum balance: from record deficit to surplus

World platinum market balance, thousand ounces — WPIC / Metals Focus, 2022–2026 forecast
Source: World Platinum Investment Council, Platinum Quarterly Q2 2026 (9 September 2026). Balance = mine supply + recycling − automotive − jewellery − industrial − investment: +905,000 oz in 2022, −802,000 in 2023, −1,096,000 in 2024, −1,440,000 in 2025 and +265,000 forecast for 2026 (a 548,000 oz surplus in the first half, a 283,000 oz deficit in the second). Above-ground stocks fell from 5.1 million oz at end-2022 to 1.7 million at end-2025 — about ten weeks of demand — and are forecast to rebuild to 2.0 million (3.4 months) by end-2026. Johnson Matthey's narrower definition gives −915,000 oz for 2025 and −371,000 for 2026; the gap is exchange-stock builds and Chinese bar demand that WPIC counts as investment.

From reef to sponge to catalyst, step by step

The primary route (top) supplies about three-quarters of the world's platinum and two-thirds of its palladium; the scrap route (bottom) the rest. Scroll sideways on mobile →
PRIMARY ROUTE (~5.6 MOZ PLATINUM, ~6.6 MOZ PALLADIUM A YEAR) SECONDARY ROUTE (~1.7 MOZ PLATINUM, ~3.1 MOZ PALLADIUM) 1 · Source ⛏ Merensky, UG2 and Platreef reefs; Norilsk Ni–Cu sulphides — or scrap South Africa 71% of Pt, Russia 44% of Pd 2 · Concentrate 🪨 Mill and float 3–5 g/t ore to a ~100–400 g/t sulphide concentrate Zimbabwe bans raw-concentrate exports (Feb 2026) 3 · Smelt → matte 🔥 Electric furnace and converter to a Ni–Cu–PGM matte (~1–3% PGM) one furnace outage = ~50 koz lost (Impala, 2026) 4 · Refine → sponge 🧪 Base-metal leach, then solvent extraction to 99.95% Pt, Pd, Rh, Ir, Ru 3 SA + 2 Russian refineries = ~90% of primary 2 · Collect ♻ Scrapped catalytic converters, jewellery, electronics, glass bushings recycled Pd at a four-year high in 2026 (JM) 3 · Sample, smelt, refine 🧫 Decan, mill, assay; plasma or pyro-smelt; refine at JM, Heraeus, BASF ~140 t of Pt+Pd a year from scrap (USGS) 5 · End uses 🚗 Autocatalysts (81% of Pd), jewellery, nitric-acid gauze, glass bushings, hard disks, capacitors, electrolysers no substitute at catalytic temperatures
PGM ore in the Bushveld grades 3–5 grams of combined metals per tonne; the Merensky Reef is platinum-rich, the UG2 chromitite rhodium-rich, the Platreef and Norilsk palladium-rich. "Sponge" is the powdered 99.95% metal the refineries sell; "6E" counts the five traded PGMs plus gold, "4E" platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold. One troy ounce is 31.1 grams; one tonne is 32,151 ounces.
Demand

The metals in the exhaust — and in the electrolyser

PGM demand is a story about cars, with footnotes about everything else. Four-fifths of palladium and two-fifths of platinum go into catalytic converters, which is why the electric vehicle is the industry's existential question — and why the answer in 2026 is "slowly": hybrids need full catalysts, Europe has softened its 2035 ban, and glass, nitric acid, hard disks and hydrogen are growing on the other side of the ledger.

What platinum is used for

World platinum demand by end use, 2025 — 8.0 million oz (Johnson Matthey)
Source: Johnson Matthey PGM Market Report, May 2026: automotive 3,329,000 oz (42%), jewellery 1,507,000, chemical 614,000, investment 556,000, glass 428,000, dental 281,000, pollution control 264,000, electrical 261,000, petroleum 213,000, other 566,000. WPIC, which counts exchange stocks and Chinese bars as investment, puts 2025 jewellery at 2.2 million oz and investment at 1.15 million.

What palladium is used for

World palladium demand by end use, 2025 — 10.1 million oz (Johnson Matthey)
Source: Johnson Matthey PGM Market Report, May 2026: automotive 8,227,000 oz (81%), electrical 535,000 (multilayer ceramic capacitors, plating), chemical 519,000, investment 382,000, dental 163,000, pollution control 131,000, jewellery 83,000, other 100,000. Rhodium is even more automotive — 899,000 of 1,063,000 oz; ruthenium is chemical (567,000) and hard disks (413,000); iridium's 236,000 oz go to electrochemistry, crucibles and spark plugs.

The forces pulling demand

A slow EV erosion, a jewellery whiplash, an AI glass boom — and a hydrogen option on iridium

🚗The powertrain question

Electric cars passed 20 million sales in 2025 — a quarter of the market, more than half in China (IEA) — and need no catalyst; global gasoline-car output has been flat at its 2023 peak and diesel fell 5%. Yet automotive PGM demand fell only 1.4% in 2025 (JM) and WPIC expects automotive platinum down 4% in 2026: hybrids carry a full converter and run it cold, the EU replaced its 2035 combustion ban with a 90% CO₂ cut that keeps plug-in hybrids, and American buyers keep choosing bigger vehicles. Palladium-to-platinum substitution, which lifted platinum through 2022–25, has run its course at today's price ratio.

💍Jewellery whiplash

When gold passed $3,000 an ounce in 2025, Chinese jewellers rediscovered platinum: fabrication rose 56% to 589,000 oz and WPIC counted 2.2 million oz of world jewellery demand, the most since 2019. Then platinum doubled and the trade reversed — Chinese jewellery demand fell 55% in the first half of 2026 and 76% in the second quarter. Jewellery is now the swing use that decides whether the market is in deficit or surplus.

🧪Glass, acid, disks — and hydrogen

Platinum-rhodium bushings spin glass fibre, and the AI data-centre build-out needs low-dielectric e-glass for circuit boards: WPIC forecasts glass demand up 23% to 528,000 oz in 2026. Platinum-rhodium gauze makes the nitric acid behind fertiliser and explosives; ruthenium hard-disk demand is at a five-year high; iridium's first commercial-scale use in PEM electrolysers arrives in 2026 as two large European projects complete (JM, 100,000 → 109,000 oz), and a net-zero build-out would need about 30% of annual iridium output. Platinum for hydrogen: 71,000 oz in 2025, 77,000 forecast.

+214 kozJohnson Matthey's forecast palladium surplus for 2026 — the first after deficits in every year from 2012 to 2025 — as recycled palladium from scrapped cars reaches a four-year high and autocatalyst loadings fall. Nornickel's own estimate is 300,000 oz. The metal that was $3,440 in March 2022 was $1,108 on 20 October 2026.
Geopolitics

A reef, a massacre, a supercycle and a Chinese futures contract

The platinum-group metals have been strategic since the catalytic converter made them so in 1975, and geopolitical since Russia's invasion of Ukraine put 44% of the world's palladium behind a tariff wall it could not quite become a sanction. The 2025–26 sequence — a record deficit, a Chinese futures frenzy, a record price, a 44% crash, a duty case that died at the ITC and a Zimbabwean export ban — in order.

1735 – 1924

Platina, the platinum group and the Merensky Reef

Spanish officers describe the "little silver" of Colombia's rivers in 1735; Wollaston isolates palladium and rhodium in 1803–04, Tennant iridium and osmium the same year, Klaus ruthenium in 1844. Russia's Urals supply most of the world's platinum through the 19th century and mint it into roubles. In 1924 Hans Merensky traces a platinum-bearing reef across the Bushveld Complex north of Johannesburg — the Merensky Reef, with the UG2 chromitite beneath it, the largest PGM deposit on Earth. Norilsk's nickel-copper ores, with their palladium, follow in 1935.

1975 – 2008

The catalytic converter makes a market

The 1975 US Clean Air Act requirements put a platinum-palladium-rhodium honeycomb on every new American car, and Europe and Japan follow; autocatalysts become the use that absorbs most of the world's PGMs. Johnson Matthey's refineries and Anglo American's Rustenburg mines grow into the market's poles; palladium's first spike (above $1,000 in 2001, on Russian stockpile sales drying up) teaches automakers to switch loadings between the metals. Platinum peaks above $2,250 in March 2008 as Eskom's first load-shedding crisis cuts South African output.

2012 – 2014

Marikana and the five-month strike

On 16 August 2012 police shoot dead 34 striking miners at Lonmin's Marikana mine — the deadliest use of force by the South African state since apartheid — and the AMCU union displaces the NUM across the platinum belt. From January to June 2014 a 70,000-worker AMCU strike shuts Anglo American Platinum, Impala and Lonmin for five months, the longest strike in South African history, cutting 2014 PGM output to 378 t from 457 t the following year (BGS). Lonmin never recovers and is absorbed by Sibanye in 2019.

2019 – Mar 2022

The palladium–rhodium supercycle

China 6 and Euro 6d emission rules load more palladium and rhodium onto every car just as South African supply falters: rhodium runs from $2,000 to a record near $29,800 an ounce in March 2021, palladium from $1,000 to a record $3,441 on 7 March 2022, two weeks after Russia invades Ukraine. Amplats' converter-plant explosion in February 2020 removes a tenth of world platinum supply for months. Automakers begin substituting platinum for palladium in gasoline catalysts — the switch that will lift platinum through 2025.

2022 – 2024

Russia walled off but not sanctioned; palladium slumps

The LPPM strips Good Delivery status from Russia's refiners and the UK imposes a 35% tariff on Russian platinum and palladium (May 2022); Germany, Japan, Korea and the UK cut purchases and Russian platinum reroutes to China via Hong Kong. Nornickel itself is never sanctioned. Palladium then collapses as the supercycle unwinds — $995 average in 2024, the lowest since 2017 — and the West's only producer buckles: Sibanye-Stillwater cuts 700 jobs and idles Stillwater West in September 2024. Platinum's deficits begin: −802,000 oz in 2023, −1.1 million in 2024 (WPIC).

2025

The record deficit, the demerger and the Chinese contract

Valterra Platinum is spun out of Anglo American on 31 May and listed in London on 2 June. South African platinum output falls 9%, Chinese jewellery fabrication rises 56% as gold soars, investors buy 1.15 million oz, and WPIC records a 1.44 million-ounce deficit — the largest ever — with above-ground stocks down to 1.7 million oz. Sibanye-Stillwater and the United Steelworkers petition for duties on Russian palladium in July and US imports stop in August; Impala announces the closure of Canada's Lac des Iles mine; the final US Critical Minerals List (7 November) keeps all five PGMs; Ivanhoe's Platreef ships first concentrate on 18 November; and on 27 November the Guangzhou Futures Exchange launches platinum and palladium futures.

Jan – May 2026

$2,925 — then the ITC says no

Chinese retail money pours into the new GFEX contracts and NYMEX platinum hits $2,925 on 26 January (palladium $2,196 the same day); lease rates top 10%. President Trump's 14 January Section 232 proclamation on processed critical minerals imposes no tariffs. On 25 February Zimbabwe suspends all raw-mineral exports, PGM concentrates included, to force local smelting. The Commerce Department sets preliminary anti-dumping duties of 132.83% (February) and countervailing duties of 109.1% (March) on Russian palladium — and on 29 May the International Trade Commission finds no material injury, so no duty orders are issued; Sibanye appeals to the Court of International Trade on 16 July. Johnson Matthey's 14 May report forecasts palladium's first surplus in fourteen years. ETF holders dump more than 500,000 oz of platinum in the half.

Jun – Oct 2026

Safety stop, strike, surplus — and a Zimbabwean lease

Impala halts its Rustenburg mines from 24 July after fatalities (about 60,000 oz lost, on top of ~50,000 from a furnace stoppage) and unveils a R60 billion five-year life-extension plan. The LME confirms it will not ban Nornickel's metal (July). Tharisa signs a 25-year lease for Karo in Zimbabwe (24 August; first ore late 2027). The United Steelworkers strike Stillwater East and Columbus from 3 September to 9 October. WPIC's 9 September Platinum Quarterly flips 2026 to a 265,000-oz surplus; GFEX opens to foreign institutions on 28 September; Generation Mining starts building Marathon in Ontario on 1 October. Platinum $1,649, palladium $1,108 — a one-year low — rhodium ~$9,000, iridium ~$8,800 and ruthenium ~$1,900 on 20 October.

Sources: USGS MCS 2026; BGS World Mineral Statistics; WPIC Platinum Quarterly Q2 2026; Johnson Matthey PGM Market Report (May 2026); Nornickel; LPPM and LME statements; UK Department for International Trade (May 2022 tariff); Federal Register (7 November 2025); White House Proclamation (14 January 2026) via White & Case; Mining.com (Commerce preliminary duties); USITC Publication 5671 (negative final determination, 29 May 2026); Reuters/CNBC Africa (Sibanye appeal, 16 July 2026); Equity Axis (Zimbabwe, 25 February 2026); Bloomberg and Sunday Times (Impala, July–September 2026); Engineering News and Business Day (Stillwater strike); Mining Weekly (Marathon, GFEX); Miningmx (Karo); Ivanhoe Mines; Valterra Platinum; Marikana Commission of Inquiry; Trading Economics and Barchart (prices).
Prices

Five metals, three price regimes

Platinum and palladium trade on NYMEX, now on Guangzhou, and are fixed twice daily in London; rhodium, iridium and ruthenium have no exchange and no fix — only dealer base prices from Johnson Matthey, Umicore, Heraeus and BASF that can move 10% in a day on a single order. That is why rhodium could go from $2,000 to $29,800 and back to $4,660 in five years, and why iridium and ruthenium have doubled and nearly tripled since 2025 without a headline.

Platinum and palladium, 2019–2026

US$ per troy ounce — annual averages (Engelhard/S&P Platts via USGS) and 20 October 2026 spot
Sources: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2022–2026 (annual averages: platinum $867 in 2019, $886, $1,094, $967, $973, $961 in 2024, ~$1,200 in 2025; palladium $1,544, $2,205, $2,419, $2,134, $1,352, $995, ~$1,100); Trading Economics (20 October 2026: platinum $1,649, palladium $1,108.50). Extremes not shown: palladium's record $3,441 (7 March 2022) and 2026 high $2,196 (26 January); platinum's record $2,925 (NYMEX, 26 January 2026) and $1,619 on 14 October, its lowest since August.

Rhodium, iridium and ruthenium

US$ per troy ounce — annual averages (USGS) and mid-October 2026 dealer quotations, log scale
Sources: USGS MCS 2022–2026 (rhodium $3,919 in 2019, $11,205, $20,254, $15,585, $6,661, $4,660 in 2024, ~$5,800 in 2025; iridium $1,486, $1,634, $5,158, $4,582, $4,673, $4,810, ~$4,400; ruthenium $263, $272, $576, $577, $466, $451, ~$690); Trading Economics and Cooksongold (rhodium ~$9,100, 19 October 2026; Kitco $8,500), Technic and Cooksongold (iridium $8,700–9,000, 16–19 October), Umicore (ruthenium $1,900, 15 October). Rhodium's record was about $29,800 in March 2021. Heraeus's January 2026 forecast ranges — rhodium $6,000–9,000, iridium $3,800–5,150, ruthenium $600–975 — have been exceeded by iridium and ruthenium.

Who supplies palladium

Primary palladium supply by region, 2025 — 6.6 million oz (Johnson Matthey)
Source: Johnson Matthey PGM Market Report, May 2026: Russia 2,950,000 oz (45%), South Africa 2,246,000 (34%), North America 712,000 (11%), Zimbabwe 422,000 (6%), other 259,000. Secondary supply added 3,135,000 oz, 2,657,000 of it from autocatalyst scrap. Nornickel alone produced 2,725,000 oz in 2025 and guides 2,415,000–2,465,000 for 2026, its lowest in about two decades.

How this market actually trades

Three venues, one tariff and a wall of ETFs

London, New York, Guangzhou

The LBMA platinum and palladium prices are set twice daily in London (administered by ICE Benchmark Administration since July 2026, after the LPPM stopped publishing its own series); NYMEX futures carry the speculative weight; and since 27 November 2025 the Guangzhou Futures Exchange's yuan contracts — opened to foreign institutions on 28 September 2026 — set the price in Asian hours. The January 2026 record was made in Guangzhou and Shanghai, not London: Chinese unwrought-platinum imports rose 17.8% in the first half of 2026 on arbitrage alone.

The dealer-quote metals

Rhodium, iridium and ruthenium have no futures, no fix and almost no stock: a few hundred thousand ounces a year each, priced by Johnson Matthey, Umicore, Heraeus and BASF base quotes that differ by source and day (rhodium $8,500 at Kitco, $9,100 at Cooksongold on the same October weekend). Their swings are the largest in metals — rhodium ×15 and back within five years — because a single glass-fibre or electrolyser order is a measurable share of the market.

The Russian discount

Russian sponge is not sanctioned, but it is tariffed (35%, UK), de-listed (LPPM), shunned by Japanese, Korean and German buyers and, since August 2025, absent from the United States after the Sibanye-Stillwater petition. The preliminary duties Commerce calculated — 132.83% anti-dumping, 109.1% countervailing — never became orders after the ITC's no-injury finding of 29 May 2026, which Sibanye has appealed. The result is a two-tier market in all but name: Russian metal clears through China and Hong Kong at a discount nobody publishes.

Investment: the swing buyer

Platinum ETFs, bars and coins absorbed 1.15 million oz in 2025 (bars and coins 402,000; Chinese bars of 500 g and more 165,000; ETFs +200,000; exchange stocks +384,000) and then sold: WPIC forecasts −83,000 oz for 2026, with ETFs −389,000. Investment is now the difference between deficit and surplus — and it follows the gold price and the Guangzhou screen, not the catalyst order book.

Sources: LBMA/ICE Benchmark Administration and LPPM notices (July 2026); WPIC Platinum Quarterly Q2 2026 (investment, Chinese imports, lease rates); Mining Weekly and Reuters (GFEX); SMM; Johnson Matthey (Russian trade flows); UK DIT (2022 tariff); USITC and Commerce Department via Mining.com; Kitco, Cooksongold, Technic, Umicore (dealer quotations).
Concentration risk

Two countries, five metals

No other mineral family depends on two suppliers the way the platinum-group metals do: South Africa and Russia together mine 83% of the world's platinum, 81% of its palladium and about 90% of its rhodium, and refine almost all of it. One is a democracy with a power-and-rail problem and the deepest mines on Earth; the other is at war. The EU's 65% single-supplier ceiling is already breached for palladium.

71%

of the world's platinum was mined in South Africa in 2025 — 120 of ~170 t (USGS estimates). Concentration along the chain:

Sources: USGS MCS 2026 (2025 mine production and reserves: South Africa 63,000 of >76,000 t); Johnson Matthey PGM Market Report, May 2026 (rhodium primary supply 2025: South Africa 566,000 of 701,000 oz; palladium primary supply: Russia 2,950,000 and South Africa 2,246,000 of 6,589,000 oz); BGS (South Africa 57% and Russia 24% of all PGMs mined in 2024); EU Regulation 2024/1252 (65% benchmark).
Dual use

The metals in the turbine blade — and in the nitric-acid plant

PGMs are not weapons materials in the way tungsten is; they are the catalysts and coatings without which the weapons, and the economy around them, do not run. A jet engine's hottest blades wear platinum-aluminide; every explosive and most fertiliser starts with nitric acid made over platinum-rhodium gauze; every circuit board carries palladium, every data centre's disks ruthenium, every fuel cell platinum. Which is why five PGMs sit on the US critical-minerals list, why Brussels calls them strategic, and why the only American mine matters more than its 2% share suggests.

✈️Engines and coatings

Platinum-aluminide and platinum-modified thermal-barrier coatings protect the single-crystal turbine blades of military and civil jet engines; platinum-rhodium thermocouples measure them; platinum fuel-nozzle and ozone-converter components ride in every airliner. WPIC notes aerospace platinum demand rising with aircraft deliveries. Iridium crucibles grow the sapphire and garnet crystals for lasers and LEDs; iridium-tipped spark plugs and platinum electrodes sit in every engine that still burns fuel.

🧨Nitric acid: fertiliser and explosives

Ammonia is oxidised to nitric acid over woven platinum-rhodium gauze at 900 °C — the Ostwald process, unchanged in a century — and nitric acid is the precursor of ammonium nitrate, TNT, RDX and most military propellants as well as of nitrogen fertiliser. Chemical demand took 614,000 oz of platinum and 519,000 of palladium in 2025 (JM), and WPIC ties its 2026 strength to nitrogen fertilisers. A country without platinum gauze cannot make shells.

💾Electronics and data

Ruthenium layers in every hard disk (413,000 oz in 2025, a five-year high as data centres fill), palladium in the multilayer ceramic capacitors and plated contacts of every board (535,000 oz), platinum in the glass-fibre bushings that make low-dielectric e-glass for AI circuit boards (glass demand +23% in 2026), and platinum-group alloys in sensors, pacemakers and catheters. These are the uses that do not shrink when the car does.

🇺🇸One mine, a list and a thin stockpile

The United States imports 89% of its platinum and 57% of its palladium (2025) and has one primary producer: Sibanye-Stillwater's Montana mines, which idled Stillwater West and cut 700 jobs in September 2024, produced 40% less platinum and palladium in 2025 and lost five weeks to a United Steelworkers strike in September–October 2026. All five traded PGMs are on the final 2025 Critical Minerals List (7 November 2025); PGMs enter duty-free; the 14 January 2026 Section 232 proclamation chose negotiated price floors over tariffs. The National Defense Stockpile held 8,380 oz of platinum, 489 oz of iridium and no palladium at its last published count (FY2022), and the FY2025 plan listed small potential disposals; the Pentagon's 2025 stockpile purchases went to cobalt, antimony, tantalum and scandium.

🇷🇺Russia: 44% of palladium, no sanction

Nornickel is not sanctioned by the United States, the United Kingdom or the European Union — the LME said so again in July 2026 — though its controlling shareholder is, its refiners lost LPPM Good Delivery in 2022, the UK tariffs its metal at 35%, the EU's 20th sanctions package hit sea exports via Murmansk, and the US has taken none of its palladium since August 2025. Washington's attempt at 240% duties ended with a no-injury finding at the ITC on 29 May 2026, now under appeal. Russian platinum flows to China through Hong Kong; Russian palladium increasingly too. And Nornickel's output is falling on its own: 2026 guidance is its lowest palladium in about twenty years.

🇪🇺Europe: strategic, refined, unmined

Platinum-group metals are strategic raw materials under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (Regulation 2024/1252), whose 2030 benchmarks — 10% domestic extraction, 40% processing, 25% recycling, no more than 65% from one supplier — are met only on recycling: Europe mines a few hundred kilograms (Finland's Kevitsa) but refines and recycles at Royston, Hanau and Hoboken. Its exposure is the automaker's: Russian palladium for German catalysts was the first flow cut in 2022, and iridium for the hydrogen strategy's electrolysers comes almost entirely from South Africa.

Sources: USGS MCS 2026 (US production, import reliance, tariffs, stockpile plan); Congressional Research Service R47833 (National Defense Stockpile inventory, FY2022); Federal Register (7 November 2025); White House Proclamation (14 January 2026) via White & Case; Johnson Matthey PGM Market Report (May 2026: end uses, Russian flows); WPIC Platinum Quarterly Q2 2026 (aerospace, glass, chemical); Sibanye-Stillwater disclosures and Montana Free Press (September 2024); Engineering News and Business Day (2026 strike); LME and Interfax (Nornickel, July 2026); Mining.com (USITC vote); EU Regulation 2024/1252.
Capital flows

Where the PGM money is going

For a decade the platinum belt was a value trap — deep, labour-intensive mines selling into a palladium price that halved and a platinum price that went nowhere. The 2025 deficit and the 2026 spike changed the arithmetic: a demerged Valterra, a R60 billion Impala plan, a restarted Zimbabwean smelter, and the first new Western PGM mines in a generation — Platreef, Marathon, Karo — are being built into a market that has just flipped to surplus. Presented as observation, not investment advice.

🇿🇦Valterra, Impala, Northam

Valterra Platinum — Anglo American Platinum demerged on 31 May 2025 and listed in London on 2 June, with Anglo later selling its residual 19.9% for R44.1 billion — guides 3.0–3.4 million oz of metal in concentrate for 2026 and rebuilt Amandelbult after its 2025 flood (output +116% in the second quarter). Impala, after the July 2026 safety stop and a furnace outage, announced a R60 billion five-year life-extension programme and guides 1.67–1.76 million 6E oz from Rustenburg in FY2027. Northam, owner of Zondereinde and Booysendal, disclosed an informal takeover approach in 2026, with Valterra the speculated suitor. Mogalakwena, Valterra's open pit, remains the world's largest and lowest-cost PGM mine.

🇿🇼Zimbabwe: the beneficiation bet

Harare suspended raw-mineral exports, PGM concentrates included, on 25 February 2026 to force smelting at home: Zimplats (Implats) restarted its expanded Selous smelter and Zimbabwe produced a record 152,000 oz of platinum in the second quarter; Unki (Valterra) ships matte; Mimosa (Sibanye/Implats) still ships concentrate and is the test of whether the rule holds. Tharisa's Karo project signed a 25-year lease on 24 August 2026 — $516 million of capital, first ore in the fourth quarter of 2027 — the Great Dyke's first new mine in a decade.

🇨🇦Platreef, Marathon — and a closing mine

Ivanhoe's Platreef on the Bushveld's northern limb shipped first concentrate on 18 November 2025 (first sale to Northam) and reaches commercial production in the fourth quarter of 2026 — the first new mechanised PGM mine in South Africa this century. In Ontario, Generation Mining broke ground at Marathon on 1 October 2026: C$992 million of capital, a Glencore offtake, Canada's first new palladium mine in years — timed as Impala Canada's Lac des Iles, 41% of Canadian palladium, heads for closure (announced for 31 May 2026, reportedly extended into 2027). Platinum Group Metals' Waterberg still has no construction decision after Implats declined further cash calls.

🇷🇺Nornickel: shrinking, rerouting

The world's largest palladium miner produced 2,725,000 oz in 2025 (−1%) and 667,000 oz of platinum, guides 2,415,000–2,465,000 oz of palladium for 2026 — a 10–11% cut and its lowest in about twenty years — on declining grades and equipment replacement, and expects a 300,000 oz global palladium surplus. Its metal clears through China and Hong Kong; the EU's 20th package has made Murmansk shipments harder; US duties were rejected at the ITC and are under appeal. The question for every Western project is whether Nornickel's decline or its discount sets the price.

🇺🇸Stillwater: the price-taker

Sibanye-Stillwater's Montana complex — the only US primary PGM source, 590 t of reserves — idled Stillwater West and cut 700 jobs in September 2024 at $1,000 palladium, produced 137,930 2E oz in the first half of 2026, petitioned for duties on Russian palladium (lost at the ITC in May 2026, appealed in July), and settled a five-week United Steelworkers strike on 9 October 2026 with a 4.5% first-year rise. Its economics are the clearest statement of the market: at $1,100 palladium the West's own mine barely covers its costs.

⚠️The risks

Every one mirrors the upside. WPIC's 2026 surplus could deepen if ETF selling continues and Chinese jewellery does not return; palladium's surplus is forecast to persist as recycling rises and loadings fall; platinum at $1,650 is still 70% above its five-year range and Chinese futures can take it back down as fast as they took it up. On the supply side, a single smelter outage (Impala's furnace, Amplats' 2020 converter) or safety stoppage removes 50,000 oz at a stroke, Eskom's reprieve — no national load-shedding since April 2025 — is unproven through a winter of growth, Zimbabwe's export rules change by decree, South Africa is weighing a 25% tax on raw chrome exports that would also catch the chrome recovered from UG2 platinum ore, and Nornickel's discount is the floor nobody can see.

This section describes where capital is flowing, based on public data. It is not financial advice.
Sources: Valterra Platinum (Q2 2026 production report; demerger), BusinessTech (Anglo's exit); Impala Platinum (Bloomberg, 27 July 2026; Sunday Times, 5 September 2026; FY2027 guidance); Northam; Equity Axis and NewZWire (Zimbabwe policy, Zimplats smelter); Tharisa and Miningmx (Karo); Ivanhoe Mines (Platreef update, January 2026); Generation Mining via Mining Weekly (9 October 2026); Platinum Group Metals Ltd (Q2 2026 results); Impala Canada via Mining Weekly (9 July 2025) and local reports; Nornickel (2025 results, 2026 guidance) via Mining.com and Miningmx; Sibanye-Stillwater SEC filings, Montana Free Press, Engineering News and Business Day; WPIC Platinum Quarterly Q2 2026; Eskom and Transnet via Mining Weekly; OECD (2026) on the proposed chrome export tax.
Company tracker

The companies that move the platinum-group metals

Four South African majors and one Russian giant at the mine, a handful of Western and Chinese refiners and recyclers in the middle, and a short line of developers building into a market that has just turned. Filter by segment or search.

CompanySegmentKey assetsStatus & recent signals
Company status reflects public disclosures as of mid-October 2026. This is an observational tracker, not investment advice.
Sources: company disclosures & filings; USGS MCS 2026; Johnson Matthey; WPIC; trade press (Reuters, Mining.com, Mining Weekly, Miningmx, Bloomberg, Business Day, Engineering News, Interfax).
Data & methodology

Open data sources

FAQ

Common questions

What are platinum-group metals used for?

Mostly for cleaning exhaust. The six platinum-group metals — platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium and osmium — are catalysts first: in 2025 cars took 8.2 million of the 10.1 million ounces of palladium the world used (81%), 3.3 of 8.0 million ounces of platinum and 0.9 of 1.06 million ounces of rhodium (Johnson Matthey), because a three-way catalytic converter is a honeycomb coated with all three. Platinum's other lives are jewellery (1.5 million ounces, with a Chinese surge in 2025), the platinum-rhodium gauzes that make nitric acid for fertiliser and explosives, the bushings that spin glass fibre, petroleum reforming catalysts, hard disks (ruthenium), multilayer ceramic capacitors (palladium), dental alloys, pacemakers and cancer drugs, and the anodes of PEM hydrogen electrolysers, which need iridium. Investment — bars, coins and ETFs — swung from 1.15 million ounces of platinum buying in 2025 to net selling in 2026.

Which countries produce the most platinum and palladium?

Two countries mine four-fifths of both. South Africa's Bushveld Complex produced about 120 of the world's 170 tonnes of platinum in 2025 (71%) and 70 of 190 tonnes of palladium (37%), and holds roughly 63,000 of the world's 76,000 tonnes of reserves (83%, USGS). Russia's Norilsk nickel-copper ores yielded 84 tonnes of palladium (44% of the world) and 20 of platinum (12%); Zimbabwe's Great Dyke 18 tonnes of platinum and 15 of palladium; Canada's Sudbury and Lac des Iles 5 and 16; the United States' Stillwater 1.8 and 6.2. Rhodium is even more concentrated — South Africa supplied 566 of the 701 thousand ounces mined in 2025 (81%, Johnson Matthey). Recycling adds about 140 tonnes of platinum and palladium a year from scrapped catalysts and jewellery. The ranking has barely moved in a decade: BGS puts South Africa at 57% and Russia at 24% of all PGMs mined in 2024.

Why did platinum hit a record in January 2026 and then fall 44%?

Because a real deficit met a speculative wave. Platinum averaged about $1,200 an ounce in 2025 (up 25%) as the market ran a 1.44 million-ounce shortfall — mine supply flat at 5.6 million ounces, South African output down 9%, Chinese jewellery fabrication up 56% as gold became unaffordable, and 1.15 million ounces of investment demand — and above-ground stocks fell to 1.7 million ounces, about ten weeks of demand (WPIC). When the Guangzhou Futures Exchange launched platinum and palladium contracts on 27 November 2025, Chinese retail money piled in: NYMEX platinum hit $2,925 on 26 January 2026. Then the physical signals reversed — ETF holders sold more than 500,000 ounces in the first half, Chinese jewellery demand fell 55%, lease rates collapsed from above 10% to about 2% — and WPIC now expects a 265,000-ounce surplus for 2026. Platinum was $1,649 on 20 October 2026, 44% below the record but still well above its 2019–2024 range of $870–1,090.

Is Russian palladium sanctioned?

Not directly, which is the point. Nornickel, which mines 44% of the world's palladium, is not on US, UK or EU sanctions lists — the LME confirmed in July 2026 that it would not ban the company's metal — although its largest shareholder, Vladimir Potanin, is. What changed after 2022 was the plumbing: the London Platinum and Palladium Market withdrew Good Delivery status from Russia's refineries, the UK put a 35% tariff on Russian platinum and palladium, Germany, Japan, Korea and the UK cut purchases, and virtually all Russian platinum now flows to China through Hong Kong. The United States tried to go further: a petition by Sibanye-Stillwater and the United Steelworkers in July 2025 stopped imports of Russian palladium, and the Commerce Department set preliminary anti-dumping and countervailing duties of 132.83% and 109.1% in early 2026 — but on 29 May 2026 the International Trade Commission found that the US industry was not materially injured, so no duty orders exist; Sibanye appealed to the Court of International Trade on 16 July 2026. Nornickel's output is falling anyway: its 2026 guidance of 2.4 million ounces of palladium is the lowest in about twenty years.

Will electric vehicles kill demand for platinum-group metals?

Slowly, and not all of it. Battery-electric cars have no exhaust and no catalyst; EV sales passed 20 million in 2025, a quarter of the market and more than half in China (IEA), and global gasoline-car output has been flat at its 2023 peak. Automotive PGM demand fell 1.4% in 2025 and WPIC expects automotive platinum down 4% in 2026 — a decline, not a collapse, because hybrids need a full catalyst and run it harder, the EU has replaced its 2035 combustion ban with a 90% CO₂ target that keeps plug-in hybrids on the road, and the US fleet is shifting to larger vehicles. Palladium, 81% automotive, is the exposed metal: Johnson Matthey forecasts its first surplus in 2026 after deficits in every year from 2012 to 2025, and recycled palladium from scrapped cars will reach a four-year high. Platinum's hedges are elsewhere — glass fibre for AI circuit boards (+23% in 2026), nitric acid, jewellery and the hydrogen economy, where PEM electrolysers would need about 30% of annual iridium output to reach net-zero scale.

Why do governments and militaries care about platinum-group metals?

Because a jet engine, a nitric-acid plant and a hydrogen fuel cell all stop without them, and 80% of the supply comes from two countries, one of them at war. Platinum-aluminide coatings protect turbine blades, platinum-rhodium gauzes make the nitric acid behind every explosive and most fertiliser, ruthenium coats the hard disks in data centres, palladium sits in the capacitors of every circuit board and iridium in crucibles and electrolysers. All five traded PGMs are on the final 2025 US Critical Minerals List and are strategic raw materials under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, whose 2030 benchmarks cap any single supplier at 65% — a target Russia already breaches for palladium. The United States imports 89% of its platinum and 57% of its palladium, has one producer, in Montana, that idled its Stillwater West mine in 2024 and lost a five-week strike in 2026, and holds 8,380 ounces of platinum and 489 of iridium in the National Defense Stockpile and no palladium. The January 2026 Section 232 proclamation chose negotiated price floors over tariffs; the Pentagon's 2025 stockpile buying went to cobalt, antimony and tantalum instead.

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