Long before the invention of modern day maps or gunpowder, the planet’s major powers were already duking it out for economic and geopolitical supremacy.
Demand for physical gold in Asia could pick up in the coming weeks as India's festival season drives interest in the metal, after high prices kept buyers at bay again this week.
When the company's Pine Cove pit mine stops producing in about eight months, work will begin to turn it into a tailings storage facility with capacity of up to 7 million tonnes.
South Africa holds the world's biggest reserves of platinum, chrome and manganese, but investment in the sector has dropped in each of the past two years as a result of increasing legal uncertainty and labour disputes.
Gokhran, part of Russia's finance ministry, was influential on the global platinum group metals markets in the 1990s and 2000s, when palladium stocks it accumulated during the 1970s and 1980s came to the market and depressed prices.