Palladium begins to outshine gold as price soars and supplies...

Palladium begins to outshine gold as price soars and supplies erode

By Lorna Nicholas -  January 17, 2019

The surging palladium price has triggered a revival of interest in PGM projects, with Platina Resources (ASX: PGM) reporting in late December it had received a number of offers for its Skaergaard gold and palladium project in Greenland.According to Platina, Skaergaard is one of the world’s largest undeveloped gold and palladium deposits outside of South Africa and Russia.As a result of the increased interest and rocketing palladium price, Platina will undertake a scoping study to determine the best path forward for Skaergaard.Due to the small market, there’s less than a handful of ASX listed stocks with palladium projects. In addition to Platina, there’s Nkwe Platinum (ASX: NKP), Panoramic Resources (ASX: PAN), Zimplats Holdings (ASX: ZIM).Nkwe’s 74%-owned Garatau project in South Africa has a resource of 43.69 million ounces comprising three PGM and gold.The project’s Garatouw deposit’s UG2 reef hosts an average palladium grade of 2.36g/t. Garatau is at pre-development stage, with a definitive feasibility study revealing the project was viable.Meanwhile, Panoramic owns the Panton platinum group metals project, where it is carrying out metallurgical test work on producing a PGM concentrate.Perhaps the only primary PGM producer is Zimplats, which produced 56,727oz of palladium in the September quarter, along with platinum, gold and rhodium from its African operations.