PGM basket price surges 85% as platinum, palladium and rhodium all rally

South African platinum group metals producers reported a realised basket price, the blended figure combining platinum, palladium, rhodium and smaller PGMs, of $2,801 an ounce for the first half of 2026, an 85% increase on the same period the previous year. The rally was unusually broad-based: palladium averaged $1,516 an ounce, up 60.7%, while rhodium averaged $10,063 an ounce, up 85.4%, alongside platinum's own sharp gains earlier in the year.

South Africa supplies roughly 70-75% of the world's mined platinum and a similarly dominant share of rhodium, meaning the basket price is not merely a company metric but a figure with direct macroeconomic significance: it feeds directly into export earnings, royalty payments and the mineral sales data Stats SA reports each month.

A complex that rallies, and falls, together

Because platinum, palladium and rhodium are mined together from the same ore body in South Africa's Bushveld Complex, producers cannot easily shift output toward whichever metal is most in demand. That means when all three rally simultaneously, as they did through much of 2025 and early 2026, the effect on producer revenue is amplified well beyond what any single metal's price move would suggest, a dynamic that showed up clearly in the outsized earnings growth South African PGM miners reported for the period.

Windfall, not a new baseline

Producers and analysts were careful to frame the 85% basket price gain as an extraordinary, price-driven windfall rather than a permanent repricing of the sector. With rhodium already showing signs of sharp two-way volatility by mid-2026, and palladium facing structural headwinds from the shift away from internal combustion vehicles, the basket price that delivered such outsized first-half earnings carried no guarantee of holding at anywhere near the same level for the rest of the year.

Analysts noted that the scale of the basket price gain, an 85% increase in a single year, was without precedent in the modern history of South African PGM mining, exceeding even the gains recorded during the sector's previous major upcycle in the early 2020s.

Shareholders in the affected companies pressed management on capital allocation plans for the windfall, with debates over special dividends, share buybacks and renewed investment in ageing shafts all featuring prominently in results presentations through the middle of the year.

Sources

• Crux Investor: South African Producers Commit Nearly $1 Billion Despite US & China Flagging PGM Supply Risk, 05 Aug 2026

Photo: The Merensky Reef in South Africa's Bushveld Complex, source of most of the world's mined platinum, palladium and rhodium. Paul venter, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.