Where does palladium come from?

In 2025 Russia mined 84 tonnes of palladium, 44% of the world's 191 tonnes (USGS MCS). South Africa followed with 37%, then Canada (8.4%), Zimbabwe (7.8%) and United States (3.2%). Only 5 countries produce it. The same mines produced {{prod.Mine production: Platinum.world}} of platinum, led by {{prod.Mine production: Platinum.top1.name}} with {{prod.Mine production: Platinum.top1.share}} (USGS MCS). Reserves are reported for the platinum-group metals combined: South Africa holds 83% of the world's 76,200 tonnes (USGS MCS).

The ordering of the two metals is the interesting part. South Africa dominates platinum; Russia leads palladium. That is because the Bushveld reefs are platinum-rich while Norilsk is palladium-rich, and the ratio in each orebody is fixed by geology. Neither producer can respond to a palladium price spike by making more palladium and less platinum.

Production means mined metal content. Because both metals are recovered from the same concentrate through the same long refining sequence, refined output lags mine output by months, and a smelter outage affects both simultaneously.

World output changed -11% on the previous year. The long-run picture is one of essentially flat mine supply against demand that swung enormously with emissions regulation, which is why palladium has had one of the most dramatic price histories of any metal in the last decade.

Russia was the largest exporter of unwrought palladium (HS 711021) in 2024 with 22% of world export value, ahead of South Africa (21%), on world trade of $13.1 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 15%.

As with the other precious metals, the export table mixes producers with refining and vaulting hubs. The United Kingdom and Switzerland appear because they refine and trade metal mined elsewhere, and metal moving in and out of exchange warehouses crosses borders repeatedly. Since 2022 the Russian share of the visible trade has become harder to read, as material has moved through different intermediaries and destinations without necessarily changing in volume.

The series shown is Palladium, spot, which was $1,267/troy oz in July 2026, up 6% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). The nominal high was $2,873/troy oz in May 2021, and the real high $3,358/troy oz in May 2021. Note the World Bank Pink Sheet carries platinum but not palladium, so this page uses the IMF series.

Palladium trades in troy ounces with a twice-daily reference price set by electronic auction under the London Platinum and Palladium Market, and NYMEX futures used for hedging. The physical market is small: annual supply is measured in low hundreds of tonnes, so the metal is genuinely illiquid compared with gold or silver, and lease rates can spike violently when metal is short in a particular location.

Two features make palladium pricing unusual. First, supply is inelastic in the strict sense: it is a by-product of nickel and platinum mining, so it does not increase when the price rises. Second, its main demand can substitute with platinum over a design cycle of a year or two. Between 2017 and 2022 palladium traded far above platinum, which prompted exactly that substitution, and the subsequent normalisation of the spread is the main reason the price fell back. Anyone reading a palladium price should read the platinum price next to it.

Palladium's dominant use is in catalytic converters for petrol engines, so it tracks gasoline vehicle output rather than total vehicle output. Every battery electric vehicle sold instead of a petrol one removes several grams of palladium demand permanently, which is the structural pressure on the metal.

Tightening limits raise the loading of precious metal per vehicle, which can offset falling vehicle numbers. China's transition to stricter standards raised palladium loadings substantially and was a major source of the demand growth behind the price spike.

Catalyst makers can reformulate toward platinum when palladium is expensive, and did so at scale after the 2018 to 2022 price divergence. The substitution takes a year or two to reach production and does not reverse quickly, so a price spike permanently destroys some demand.

One Russian producer supplies a large share of world palladium. Payment, shipping, insurance and listing restrictions after 2022 complicated that flow even where the metal itself was not sanctioned, adding a persistent risk premium and rerouting trade.

Palladium output depends on nickel economics at Norilsk and on platinum economics in the Bushveld. A South African power crisis or a nickel price collapse changes palladium supply for reasons entirely unrelated to palladium.

Spent converters return substantial quantities of palladium, and scrap flows respond to price within months. High prices accelerate scrappage and collection, which caps rallies; low prices slow them, which cushions falls.

Because the physical market is small, movements of metal into and out of exchange warehouses and investor holdings have outsized effects. Acute local shortages have produced extreme lease rates and backwardation without any change in mine supply.

Palladium is never the reason a mine is dug. At Norilsk, nickel-copper sulfide ore is mined underground, concentrated by flotation and smelted; the platinum-group metals report to the converter matte along with the nickel and copper and are recovered at the far end of the base-metal refinery. In the Bushveld, narrow reef ore is mined, floated, smelted and converted, and the precious metals are separated after the base metals have been removed.

The precious-metal refinery is where palladium is finally isolated, through a sequence of dissolutions, precipitations and solvent-extraction steps that separate the six platinum-group elements from one another and from gold. The pipeline holds several months of production, which is why refined supply can diverge from mine supply for a quarter or more and why a refinery outage matters as much as a mine outage.

Recycling follows a compressed version of the same route. Spent autocatalysts are collected, the ceramic substrate is milled, and the metal-bearing powder is smelted and refined alongside primary material. Because a converter contains platinum, palladium and rhodium together, recycling returns the whole basket, which is one reason the three metals' prices are linked.

Everything on this page is measured as metal content, in tonnes. World mine supply of palladium is measured in low hundreds of tonnes a year, which puts the entire market's annual output at a volume that would fit in a single room.

Autocatalysts dominate. In a petrol engine's three-way catalytic converter, palladium oxidises carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons and helps reduce nitrogen oxides, and it has been the preferred metal for that job for decades because it performed better than platinum at the temperatures petrol engines run.

Electronics is the second use: palladium in multilayer ceramic capacitors, which appear in the billions in every kind of device, and in connector plating and soldering. Dentistry uses palladium alloys for crowns and bridges, though less than it once did. Chemical catalysis uses it in hydrogenation, in purified terephthalic acid production for polyester, and in the coupling reactions that underpin much of modern pharmaceutical synthesis.

Jewellery is a small use, mostly as the whitening element in white gold and occasionally as palladium jewellery in its own right. Investment demand exists through bars, coins and exchange-traded funds but is far smaller than for gold or silver.

The use that would matter most for the metal's future is hydrogen: palladium membranes purify hydrogen and palladium absorbs it readily. Whether that becomes a large market depends on how hydrogen infrastructure develops, and it is far from certain.

The chain has the same shape as platinum's but with the country weights reversed and an additional geopolitical complication. Norilsk supplies a large share of world palladium from a single Arctic industrial complex, reached by rail to Dudinka and then by sea along the Northern Sea Route or by air. Restrictions and self-sanctioning by Western buyers after 2022 did not stop the metal moving but changed who handled it and where it went, and added a persistent premium for guaranteed non-Russian material.

South African supply carries the electricity and labor risks described on the platinum page: deep mines, a strained grid, and a history of long wage strikes. Because palladium comes out of the same shafts, those risks apply to both metals simultaneously.

Refining is the third narrow point, concentrated in a small number of facilities in South Africa, Russia, Britain, Germany, Japan and the United States. The months-long pipeline through those refineries means the market cannot respond quickly to a shortage even when mines are running normally.

The structural risk is demand rather than supply. Palladium's dominant use is a technology being replaced: every gasoline vehicle not built is palladium demand that does not return, and the substitution toward platinum triggered by the price spike removed more. Recycling volumes will keep growing as the existing petrol fleet is scrapped, which means secondary supply rises exactly as primary demand falls. That is an unusual and uncomfortable position for a producer.