The strengthening of the rand had extended the six-year run of poor platinum prices, keeping fresh investment in new production in SA, the largest source of the metal, on hold for a while longer, CEs of SA’s platinum mines said on Tuesday. The platinum price had been weak for six years despite six successive years of deficits, said World Platinum Investment Council director of research Trevor Raymond at the African Mining Indaba. "This caused confusion, mistrust and a huge amount of negative sentiment." While the price in dollars has started to recover, the strengthening of the rand because of a weakening dollar and improving sentiment towards SA amid political change in the ANC as well as commitments to weed out corruption has delivered an unwelcome knock to local platinum miners. "We’ve seen a muted price environment and a very strong rand recently so we’ll see price and profit pressure on some assets and that will mean that in this environment, there’s unlikely to be any expansio...
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