Producer

Anglo American Platinum

AMS.JOHQ ZA · Johannesburg, South Africawebsite ↗

World's largest platinum producer; South Africa controls 92% of global platinum and ~80% of rhodium production; Anglo Platinum (Amplats) is the dominant Bushveld Complex producer supplying automotive catalytic converter manufacturers

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Inputs supplied

2

Goods downstream

2

Facilities

0

Stories

What they make

2 inputs Anglo American Platinum supplies

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  • Platinum (World #1, ~35% Global Supply)

    40%
  • Rhodium (~80% Global Supply via South Africa)

    25%
  • Palladium

    25%
  • Iridium + Ruthenium + Other PGMs

    10%

Intelligence

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  • Did you know2023

    Anglo American Platinum is publicly known as the world's largest platinum producer, but rhodium is their most strategically irreplaceable product. South Africa (primarily Amplats, Impala, and Sibanye-Stillwater) produces approximately 80% of global rhodium supply, with Russia (Nornickel) producing the remaining ~15%. Rhodium is required in three-way catalytic converters to reduce nitrogen oxides (NOx) to nitrogen and oxygen — a function that palladium and platinum cannot perform at comparable efficiency. In April 2021, rhodium reached $29,800 per troy ounce — briefly exceeding gold as the world's most expensive metal — due to limited supply and tightening Euro 6/EPA emissions standards. Rhodium has no viable substitute: automakers would need regulatory exemptions to reformulate catalytic converters without it. The same mineral deposit that supplies rhodium also produces iridium — required for PEM electrolyzer anodes in green hydrogen production — making South Africa's Bushveld Complex the critical supplier for both the elimination of the gasoline car (catalytic converter) and its proposed replacement with hydrogen fuel (electrolyzer).

    Anglo American Platinum
  • Origin2023

    Anglo American Platinum traces its origins to the 1924 discovery of the Merensky Reef by Dr. Hans Merensky — a German-born South African geologist who recognized that a specific geological stratum in the Bushveld Igneous Complex, running across the Limpopo and North West provinces, contained extraordinary concentrations of platinum group metals. The Bushveld Igneous Complex is a 2.06 billion-year-old volcanic intrusion — one of the largest in Earth's history — that concentrated PGMs from the mantle. Anglo American (then Anglo-American Corporation, founded by Ernest Oppenheimer in 1917 with J.P. Morgan backing) acquired rights to develop Merensky Reef through the 1920s-1950s. The geopolitical consequence: approximately 80% of the world's known platinum reserves and 80% of rhodium are concentrated in a 200km arc in South Africa's Bushveld region. Every catalytic converter on every vehicle in the world depends on PGMs extracted from an ancient volcanic intrusion in South Africa.

    Anglo American Platinum