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Ruthenium to punch through $1,000
Garth Theunissen
Posted: Wed, 21 Mar 2007

[miningmx.com] -- LITTLE known platinum group metal, ruthenium, is a handy indicator of just how deep the commodities boom has penetrated.

Soaring demand for hard disk storage drives means the ruthenium price recently broke through the $700/oz mark for the first time ever. That’s because ruthenium is a key coating material in the manufacture of hard drives and thanks to a change from “longitudinal magnetic recording” to “perpendicular magnetic recording” the thickness of ruthenium coatings has doubled.

soaring demand for hard disk storage drives ruthenium price

Yet there was a time when ruthenium was regarded as a nuisance. With historical prices ranging between $50/oz and $200/oz, ruthenium often had to be stockpiled until the selling price had reached attractive levels.

But JPMorgan now reckons this former nuisance metal could become a handy “profit kicker” for South African platinum miners, particularly those exposed to UG2 reefs where ruthenium is most plentiful.



Click on image to enlarge

“We believe there’s a good chance that this forgotten metal will move into four digits soon,” said JP Morgan in a recent report.

So investors might want to keep a close eye on the likes of Lonmin (with 75% of operations exposed to UG2), Implats and Angloplat (50%) and Northam (35%).

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