Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) is investing heavily in alternative technologies that will diversify the demand for platinum away from autocatalysts and jewellery, which make up the bulk of offtake. "It’s a prudent business strategy to have a diverse source of demand for your product, diverse in application and diverse in longevity you’d expect a particular application to be in place," Andrew Hinkly, the executive head of marketing at the world’s largest platinum miner, said in an interview. While platinum producers are jockeying for position in the power trains — essentially the mechanisms that power cars, trucks and buses — that use hydrogen-based fuel cells or batteries, they are well aware the fossil-fuel engines that dominate the industry now and are a major consumer of platinum group metals (PGMs) for autocatalysts to scrub out gases will not be around forever.
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