Platinum's 2025 deficit revised to a record 1.1 million ounces

The World Platinum Investment Council's Platinum Quarterly report for the first quarter of 2026 confirmed that the 2025 platinum market deficit had been revised up to roughly 1.1 million ounces, the deepest shortfall on record and a marked widening from the already-elevated deficits of prior years. For 2026, the WPIC forecast a further deficit of about 240,000 ounces, smaller than 2025's shortfall but still consistent with an unusually tight market.

The report highlighted industrial demand as an increasingly important pillar supporting the deficit, with platinum use in artificial intelligence-related infrastructure and hydrogen technology expected to lift industrial demand by around 5% during 2026 to roughly 2.385 million ounces, adding a new source of consumption alongside the metal's traditional automotive and jewellery uses.

South Africa's central role

With South Africa supplying the large majority of the world's mined platinum, the WPIC's confirmation of a record 2025 deficit validated the extraordinary price gains South African PGM producers had enjoyed through the rally, while also underlining how little room the market had to absorb any further disruption to South African supply, whether from safety stoppages, power constraints or labour action, without deficits widening even further.

A narrower, but still real, shortfall ahead

The narrowing of the forecast deficit from 1.1 million ounces in 2025 to 240,000 ounces in 2026 signalled that the WPIC expected some rebalancing, whether through demand destruction at higher prices, recycling growth or a modest supply recovery, even as it maintained that the core drivers of the rally, depleted above-ground stocks and structural supply constraints, remained largely intact.

Analysts said the scale of the revision underscored how difficult it remained to measure platinum supply and demand in real time, given the metal's reliance on recycling flows and above-ground stock movements that are only fully understood well after the fact.

Industry bodies said the revision strengthened the case for continued investment in South African PGM capacity, arguing that a deficit of this scale, sustained over multiple years, justified capital commitments that might otherwise have seemed risky after the sector's difficult 2023-2024 downturn.

Jewellery retailers in Asia, a large source of platinum demand, reported adjusting their own inventory strategies in response to the WPIC's numbers, favouring smaller, more frequent restocking over the large forward purchases that had been standard practice before the deficit era began.

Sources

• PR Newswire: WPIC announces fourth consecutive platinum market deficit: 240 koz expected in 2026 following 1.1 Moz in 2025, 19 May 2026

Photo: Platinum-bearing ore from the Merensky Reef in South Africa, source of most of the metal behind the record 2025 deficit. Smithsonian Institution, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.