'Little silver' outshines its golden rival
By Carl Mortished, International Business Editor
The Times February 18, 2006
THE Spanish conquistadors, obsessed with gold, dismissed platinum as “little silver” and the hard, brilliant metal was not favoured until the early 20th century.
With the development of powerful oxyacetylene torches, art deco designers were able to fashion platinum into fine jewellery.
However, the metal’s industrial applications have always driven the market. It is rarer than gold — its supplies are dominated by a few mining groups: Anglo Platinum and Impala Platinum in South Africa and Norilsk in Russia.
During the Second World War and the Cold War, platinum was considered a strategic metal and supplies to consumer markets dried up. But during the 1990s the fashion for white metal, particularly in Japan and China, pumped up demand for platinum jewellery.
Today the market for platinum is driven by the automobile industry, more specifically by ever-tightening emissions controls and the catalytic convertors that use platinum and its related metal, palladium, to clean exhaust.
Auto catalysts absorb more than half of the world’s supply of platinum — demand that has pushed up the price from $400 an ounce to more than $1,000 an ounce in five years.
Johnson Matthey, the world’s biggest platinum trader, sees automotive demand continuing to rise. But the high price is hurting jewellery sales, as consumers switch to gold — which is now cheaper.
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd. |
