Sibanye Stillwater (SBSW): Platinum Scale, Gold Protection

The Precious Metal And High-Tech Miner

When it comes to precious metals, people immediately think about gold, and likely silver as well. Another one is platinum, also used in jewelry and for coin making.

What is less known is that precious metals, and all metals of the platinum group metal (PGM), are also very important industrial metals, used in applications like electronics & semiconductors, green energy, chemical production, aerospace, healthcare, and heavy industries.

In parallel, geopolitical and financial instability have led many investors to look for safe assets like gold and other precious metals to protect themselves against inflation, high global debt levels, and counterparty risks.

So, for conservative investors looking to re-balance their portfolio, the ideal company could be one that is both involved in gold and precious industrial metals. If the global instability gets worse, the gold and platinum parts will benefit from capital flying to safety.

If the global situation stabilizes, high-tech consumption of the platinum group metals will rebound drastically, boosting demand in this scenario as well.

As platinum deposits are very rare on Earth, only a handful of companies display such a profile. One of the most preeminent platinum and gold mining companies is the South African miner Sibanye Stillwater.

Platinum Group Metals (PGMs): Why They Matter for Tech & Energy

Before looking deeper into the operation of Sibanye Stillwater, it will be useful to better understand the metals it produces.

Platinum is a very rare metal on Earth, with an abundance in the Earth’s crust of about a millionth of 1%. This makes the discovery of platinum ore very difficult, at least for ore concentrated enough to be economically viable to mine.

Most of the production of platinum is done in South Africa, followed by Russia and Zimbabwe. Even then, it is a relatively small production, with South Africa producing only 140,000 kg in 2022 and Russia only 20,000 kg.

Source: Natural Resources Canada

Platinum ore usually contains related metals grouped together in the so-called platinum group metals (PGMs):

• Platinum
• Palladium
• Iridium
• Osmium
• Rhodium
• Ruthenium

It would be too long to describe each of these metals’ characteristics and applications, but they share a few common traits.

The first one is that, besides being found together, they are all very rare, with platinum and palladium the most common, and the others even more rare.

As a result, they are all produced in very small amounts compared to even gold or silver global production.

As they are found with platinum ore, they are also very concentrated geographically, mostly in Russia and South Africa. As a result, this makes the South African supplies especially important and impactful for prices in Western countries in the context of escalating tensions with Russia.

Lastly, they share a lot of common general applications, thanks to similar chemical characteristics:

• Chemistry and catalysis: these metals are able to boost 100-1,000x the speed and efficiency of chemical reactions. As such, they are crucial for the global chemical industry, and are also key in many new energy applications like hydrogen and synthetic fuel production, fuel cells, etc.
  • Catalysis is today the major demand driver of platinum, as it is used in catalytic converters in fossil-fuel cars.

Source: Natural Resources Canada

• Corrosion and heat resistance: with high melting point and resistance to oxidation (a key feature of all precious metals), these metals are often alloyed together to create corrosion-resistant welds and metal parts, leading to use in:
  • Aerospace: from jet engine turbine blades, high-heat electrical contacts, to aerospace fasteners.
  • Energy and material production: furnaces, glass crucibles, and generator turbines.
  • Piping (including for oil & gas), drilling parts, extruders (including for 3D printing), etc.
• High-conductivity: the combination of corrosion resistance and high conductivity makes these metals useful for electronics and semiconductor production applications like circuit boards, chips, antennas, etc.
  • They are also increasingly used in batteries and EVs.
• Niche medical applications: cancer treatments, radiographies, etc.

(You can also read a more detailed analysis of investment possibilities in these metals in the corresponding report on platinum, iridium, rhodium, and ruthenium.)

Gold Overview

Gold has historically always been considered the safest form of money, as a currency that can exist without counterparty risks from other nations or any government.

This link to currencies and the monetary system was officially severed in 1971 when the dollar’s convertibility to gold was abandoned. Still, central banks are holding massive gold reserves “just in case”, and have turned into steady buyers over the past few years.

Source: Visual Capitalist

Some data points also indicate that China and the BRICS countries might be re-considering the role of gold in international trade, compared to the dollar, for example, with Shanghai actively working at becoming an international gold trading hub.

Source: Jim Bianco

In addition, the de facto convertibility of the yuan into gold will be supported by the opening of new physical-delivery vaulting in Hong Kong and plans for more warehouses abroad, including in international financial centers like Dubai.

A key BRICS plank, he said, is the cross-border central bank digital currency pilot often called mBridge. It was launched by China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates, with Saudi Arabia recently joining.

It lets participants settle in local currencies rather than dollars. Against that, he set out a US path that leans on dollar stablecoins, digital tokens backed by short-term Treasuries.

“‘Paper gold is over’ as BRICS nations build dollar-free payments” in Mining.com.

Overall, both the rise of Bitcoin and gold over the last few years indicate a growing concern of investors and nations about global debt levels, inflation, and currency risks.

This should greatly benefit all precious miners and producers.

Sibanye-Stillwater (SBSW): Production, Assets & 2024 Results

South African Sibanye Stillwater is one of the largest platinum producers in the world. The country produces ~75% of the world’s platinum, and Sibanye Stillwater is responsible for a quarter of that production.

It is also the largest producer with a strong focus on this metal, as Anglo American (NGLOY) is a diversified mining company with operations in many other countries and metals.

Source: Mining Technology

Sibanye Stillwater produces around 2.5 million tons of platinum group metals every year, as well as almost a million ounces of gold, 2.7 million ounces of silver, and chrome, zinc, and copper in smaller amounts.

Source: Sibanye Stillwater

Most of this production is from its mine in South Africa, but it also has a major platinum mining asset in North America: Stillwater, the largest producer of PGM in the USA and one of the world’s largest out of South Africa and Russia.

Some production also comes from recycling activities, where the company utilizes its expertise in refining platinum to reuse as much as possible the metal present in old catalytic converters and other materials containing platinum or other PGMs.

Source: Sibanye Stillwater

This activity was expanded by the $82M acquisition of US recycler Metallix in June 2025.

Metallix specializes in producing recycled precious metals from industrial waste streams.

Its operations in Greenville, North Carolina, have processed approximately 4.2 million pounds of precious metal-bearing waste materials, resulting in the production of significant quantities of copper, gold, iridium, palladium, platinum, rhodium, and silver in the 12 months leading up to 31 December 2024.

Platinum and PGM prices have had a low point when markets thought that EVs would very quickly replace all ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles.

Source: Bullion Vault

While this will likely ultimately happen, the growing demand for hybrid cars and the growing demand for PGM in new applications have since alleviated fears of a crash in platinum and PGM demand.

It should also be noted that thanks to capital discipline like slowing down the Stillwater mine, and very low production costs in South Africa, Sibanye Stillwater managed to stay profitable even at the lowest point in platinum price, and before the current bull run in gold.

Source: Sibanye Stillwater

Battery & Green Metals: Keliber Lithium and Beyond

Thanks to the role of platinum in hydrogen production, Sibanye Stillwater has been active in green energy for a while now. The company is looking to expand into other metals that are key to the green transition, especially lithium and copper.

Regarding lithium, an important step will be the end of construction of the Keliber lithium project in Finland.

With a mine, concentrator, and a lithium refinery, the project owned at 79.82% by Sibanye Stillwater could produce as much as 15,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate for at least 18 years.

The investment offers the opportunity for further geographic diversification in an attractive mining destination and the opportunity to forge long-term relationships with established lithium industry players that have a shared vision of supplying the electric vehicle supply chain.”

Neal Froneman, Chief Executive Officer, Sibanye-Stillwater

This makes it the most advanced, fully integrated lithium hydroxide project in the EU region.

It should boost the independence of the European EV supply chain, which is expected to grow very rapidly and look for local supply responding to the strictest emission standards.

Source: Sibanye Stillwater

Gold Segment: 2024 Output, Realized Prices, Outlook

Thanks to the exploding gold prices and the still subdued platinum price, gold had become a large part of Sibanye Stillwater’s revenues in 2024, with an average received price of $3,049/oz, much below the more recent gold prices in 2025.

Source: Sibanye Stillwater

Production volumes have been declining slowly in the past years, but mine extension, new projects, the end of salary negotiations with employees of a mine, and extra investments should be stabilizing the production for the foreseeable future.

Source: Sibanye Stillwater

Optionality via Uranium: Beisa/Neo Energy Deal

The Cooke gold mine also has a uranium Mineral Resource of 32.2Mlb. Meanwhile, the company also sold at the end of 2024 the Beisa uranium project to UK-based Neo Energy Metals (NEO.L) in exchange for a 40% equity stake in Neo Energy and receiving in the future royalties on all uranium sold.

In doing so, the company also has exposure to low-carbon nuclear energy upside, while keeping its capital available for expansion of PGM and gold production instead.

Long-Tail Risk: Could Asteroid Mining Disrupt PGMs?

While platinum and PGMs are extremely rare on Earth, it is actually surprisingly abundant in space. So mining them could be a key center of a future space-based economy.

This is sometimes mentioned in relation to PGM miners, as a potential threat to the company.

While on Earth, we are digging as deep as 2-4 km for gold or platinum, just one asteroid, 16 Psyche, might be a 200km chunk of metal waiting to be mined for a value (at current prices) of $10-700 quintillion. Of course, such a value would not hold, and the price of gold and platinum would crash.

Overall, it is possible that in the very long term, platinum will become a very cheap and abundant metal, thanks to technological progress making asteroid mining a routine task.

It would then follow the trajectory of aluminum, which was, at first, a rare and exotic commodity, but today, it is a very common metal used on millions of tons scale.

But as asteroid mining technology is likely decades ahead in the future before it becomes mature, this should not be much of a concern for today’s investors.

Conclusion

Sibanye Stillwater is an interesting resource company for investors looking ot diversify their portfolio.

On one hand, it is one of the world’s largest producers of a key group of metals that are crucial in maintaining the modern world, from chemical production to pollution control and aerospace alloys.

Overall, these metals will be crucial for a future space-based economy or a hydrogen economy, with very few alternative sources to South Africa’s mines.

On the other hand, it is also an “antifragile” precious metal producer extracting from the Earth gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. So if the global trade, economy, and geopolitics continue to degrade, it could provide more stability to a portfolio than a more volatile investment like tech stocks.

Lastly, it also has exposure to uranium prices, another metal getting to be in short supply, and for now mostly sourced from Russia.

The company stock has passed its lowest point, when platinum prices were at a multi-year low, and gold prices had not started to rise yet. Still, if the prices of these metals keep rising, the profit of the company could be multiplied several times.

So overall, Sibanye Stillwater can have a place in most portfolios, with the exact exposure depending on an investor’s risk profile and macroeconomic forecasts.

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