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SFA Oxford Platinum Lectures 2025 attracted the broadest spectrum of platinum interest amid the highest attendance ever, with a similar top-notch turnout evident at the London Platinum Week that followed.

"We had good representation across the board," an upbeat SFA Oxford CEO Henk de Hoop told Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.

Moreover, the platinum jewellery component presentation in London had twice as many people as it did in 2024, with jewellers in China starting to restock platinum amid fading gold momentum.

That was among the themes coming through, too, from the presentations of the World Platinum Investment Council (WPIC) on the outlook for China.

"WPIC covered all the aspects in the Chinese market, also automotive, but particularly standing out is that WPIC is becoming quite optimistic that the jewellers are starting to restock platinum, with the biggest driver being the difference between gold and platinum pricing and the gold momentum is starting to fade a bit in China from a momentum of buying volume.

"It needs only a small proportion of that gold market to look at white gold and platinum particularly as an alternative to have a potentially large impact on the platinum market, which is much smaller than the gold market," De Hoop noted.

Ostensibly resurging, too, in addition to jewellery demand, is also China's investment demand, which is poised to help the platinum market in particular.

Mining Weekly: How important is it that China's platinum jewellery stores are now including platinum investment bars in their offerings?

De Hoop: It's a very important development, because there are excess savings in China. The property market is not providing the returns anymore. Gold markets provided great returns, and that's stalling now. What we do need is a bit of price momentum and platinum, and you can show them there's actually momentum building there, and there is a supply deficit, and the stocks are starting to deplete, it could become a very important story. The reason as well is that China is such a large savings market, there's only a tiny percentage of that money that needs to flow into investment bars for it to make a huge difference to the platinum market, so it is very exciting. It will hopefully suck up some platinum and hopefully move the platinum price upwards in that process as well.

Platinum supply is down even though demand is robust. Why is this supply/demand paradox continuing?

We had a CEO's panel, and remember a basket is being mined and although the enthusiasm to its platinum is increasing, and the deficits are there, the price hasn't moved realistically, except for last week, where it popped up by about $150. But the net impact of the collapse in the rhodium and palladium prices over the last two or three years is that there hasn't been much money going into the ground, and it hasn't been happening for a couple of years. The confidence in the longer term future is weak, partly because of the battery electric vehicle penetration concerns that people have, and there are very few alternatives out there at the moment, in the sense that the fuel cell boom that people are hoping to come, is not as clear-cut as what one would need to have confidence to spend billions in the ground to expand the production.

The lack of investment in the industry means that naturally in mining, you will start to fade a bit from a volume perspective. South Africa has a particular problem as well, that a lot of the bulk of the production comes from very deep old mines, and those are aging and replacing that production is particularly challenging because of the depth they're mining at. It just takes too long to sink deep shafts, so you will see a naturally declining profi...