Lorne:
I've thought about that for platinum and palladium from the very beginning:
1) From the 1996 annual report of Stillwater Mining as well as an April, 1996 interview with Charles Engles, former CEO, total world production was about five million oz of platinum, but world demand was about 5.5 million oz. The shortfall is made up from Russian strategic stockpile sales. Palladium sees 4 million oz in production but 6 million oz in consumption.
2) If Naxos builds a pretty decent-sized mine, say, 10,000 tons a day and runs it, say, 240 days a year (5 days a week and 48 weeks a year), we're talking 2,400,000 tons year head ore. Look at the yields we seem to be getting, and that's a lot of platinum & palladium that will come into supply. Of course, it'll take years to get mine permits and construction and demand may be higher then, but still.
There's a flip side. The fact that there's lot of platinum and palladium in the ore may help us get mining permits because it is good for the world environment to have low platinum and palladium prices (e.g. catalytic converters, fuel cells, etc). Plus, lots of new uses can be found for the metals. |
