China needs PGM’s now

Increasingly stringent emissions standards are forcing auto manufacturers to focus on catalytic converters and their air cleaning properties. According to Johnson Matthey, catalytic converters, which are canisters with honeycomb-like surfaces that convert emissions into less harmful substances, are fitted to more than 90% of new passenger cars worldwide. As air quality has become a pressing issue, they have emerged as the single largest source of demand for platinum group metals. Sales of cars and light commercial vehicles will reach a record 83.2 million units this year and 87.2 million in 2014, says LMC Automotive, a research company in Oxford, England.1With each vehicle containing a few grams of PGM’s the numbers add up quickly, and legislation requiring their use is being implemented at a furious pace. In the past five years, both Brazil and Chile passed legislation mandating the use of catalytic converters. Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand are already on board. Higher North American, European, and Asian automobile emission standards are also expected to add pressure to automotive manufacturers to increase the use of PGM’s in their catalytic converters.2 However, it is the air quality in China that has reached emergency levels. While we have all seen occasional images of a fog-like cloud of pollution covering Beijing, air quality has now become a critical national issue for the Chinese.

Just how bad is the air quality in Beijing? “The air at Ground Zero was safer to breathe, from a particulate standpoint, than the air in Beijing, on an average basis.” –Dr. Jacqueline Moline, a specialist in occupational medicine and Chair of the Hofstra University North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine’s Population Health programs, referring to the period beginning two weeks after 9/11 when monitoring began.3 To address this air quality emergency, on September 12, 2013, the State Council (China’s cabinet) unveiled its long-awaited “Atmospheric Pollution Prevention Action Plan”. China has recently experienced some of the worst air pollution in memory, severe enough to become the No. 1 cause for social unrest and the source of a 15% drop in tourist visits to Beijing during the first half of 2013. Air pollution is also causing over a million premature deaths a year and billions of dollars in environmental damage. The goal of the new plan is to improve air quality in the country by 2017, while imposing stricter air-pollution reduction guidelines in three key industrial areas surrounding Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.4 While the new rules will likely reduce the number of cars on the road, they will also spur the replacement of polluting cars with newer ones equipped with catalytic converters. This, in turn, should drive increased demand for PGM’s.

While Beijing struggles to reduce its air pollution there is another technology close to commercial production that will eliminate vehicle emissions all together, again using a healthy amount of PGM’s.

According to Robert Friedland of Ivanhoe, senior officials in Japan tell him that the Toyota Motor Company will announce hydrogen fuel cell automobiles later this year with commercial production being achieved in 2015. These vehicles run on hydrogen gas rather than gasoline and emit no harmful tailpipe emissions; however they do use a substantial amount of platinum as a catalyst to generate electricity. How much platinum will they require? “These cars will use ounces, not tenths of ounces of platinum,” Friedland said, adding, “You will need a telescope to see how high the price of Platinum will go.”5

Either by cleaning emissions or reducing them to zero, it is clear that catalytic converters will play a major role in the global push to improve air quality. Further, after much time and many false starts, it appears that widespread adoption of fuel celled powered vehicles is close to becoming a reality. Both of these developments are bullish for the long-term fundamentals for PGMs and highlight why platinum and palladium products should have a place in your portfolio.