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The demand for platinum as an investment product is currently "extremely strong" in China.

"We're seeing Chinese consumers who are looking for hard assets that are also liquid. With the increase in the gold price, investors are looking for alternatives and platinum naturally fits into that narrative," World Platinum Investment Council research director Edward Sterck told Mining Weekly in a Zoom video interview, following the publication of the Platinum Quarterly Report for the Second Quarter of 2025, as well as an updated full-year 2025 forecast. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

"What's really interesting is where we're seeing the strongest growth in platinum investment demand is in the smaller bar sizes and in coins, which is a clear indicator of broad-based demand.

"We're not talking about high net worth investors here, we're talking about the average consumer, the kind of retail-type consumer whose seeing a value opportunity in platinum," Sterck pointed out, at a time when the platinum market is forecast to see its third consecutive annual deficit in 2025, which has been brought about by a combination of constrained supply juxtaposed with demand that is proving to be more robust than anticipated.

"If you exclude Covid - so 2020, when output was impacted by Covid restrictions plus the outage at the then Anglo American Platinum and now Valterra ACP smelter in Rustenburg - 2025 is the lowest mine supply year since 2003."

Confronting the stronger-than-anticipated automotive demand for platinum, an inflection point for jewellery demand in China, and the "extremely strong" demand for platinum as an investment product, a nigh one-million-ounce 2025 deficit is on the way.

"If you look at forecast mine supply for this year, it's roughly seven-million ounces. If you look at forecast demand, it's roughly 7.9-million ounces, so regardless what happens as we go through to next year, we've still got that big supply/demand disconnect," Sterck reported.

Discarded as being "pretty de minimis" is the 2% drop in automotive demand and described as "really just economics" is platinum's looming five-year mine supply low: "The pricing just isn't adequate to sustain or increase supply going forward . . . our forecast for this year, and going forwards for the next few years, is for ongoing and sustained deficits."

Mining Weekly: What's behind the recovery of platinum jewellery demand and how sustainable is it?

Sterck: There's been a lot of focus when it comes to jewellery. Since 2014, we've had roughly 3.5% CAGR growth in demand for platinum jewellery from the world at large and what appears to be a fairly significant inflection point and quite substantial growth in China.

The thing I should probably emphasise with regards to that growth potential in China is it's being led to a degree by the wholesalers and the retailers who are trying to compensate for a big decline in consumer demand for gold jewellery by offering something else, and that really means platinum, because China's not a big silver market to the same degree that Europe and North America are, so the wholesalers are trying to push that platinum jewellery into the market, which will result in a pretty significant year-on-year increase in terms of true consumer demand, but we don't have the data yet. I'd probably look towards the second week of October, which is Golden Week, and quite an important week in terms of retail sales for jewellery in China, to see confirmation of that really translating from the wholesaler efforts into true consumer buying.

How much of China's investment demand is structural, and how much is being driven by current market conditions?

In contrast to the kind of slightly cautious message I just imparted regarding jewellery, the inves...