Africa’s PGM industry remains highly concentrated in South Africa and Zimbabwe, which account for all 51 identified mining assets. South Africa dominates both active operations and the development pipeline, while Zimbabwe provides a smaller but strategically important second centre. Future supply growth is likely to be gradual and driven by a limited group of expansions and new mines.

Nigeria has confirmed lithium reserves estimated at 3.3 million metric tonnes at a mining site near Abuja, alongside the identification of a separate polymetallic mineral province in Kaduna State that also carries lithium mineralisation. The findings were disclosed at the African Natural Resources and Energy Investment Summit 2026 in Abuja as part of the country's push to build out its critical minerals sector. The 3.3 million-tonne Abuja Lithium Site estimate was disclosed by Steron Mining and Company Limited during a facility tour for summit delegates. Company officials said the site hosts an estimated 94.8 million tonnes of total mineral resources, including lithium-bearing ore and granitic rock, with verified spodumene grades at licensed Nigerian sites ranging between 2.66% and 5.96% Li₂O with some deposits recording concentrations of up to 13% Li₂O, well above the global commercial average of 1-2%. Steron said it has since also identified tantalite occurrences at the site and continues active exploration. Nigeria's Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, described the Kaduna find as a "world-class" mineral province containing high grade platinum group metals, gold, nickel, copper, lithium and rare earth elements, verified by the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency in collaboration with the discovering private operator. The lithium finds build on an already active Chinese processing footprint in Nigeria. Chinese firms including Jiuling Lithium and Canmax Technology have committed more than $1.3 billion to Nigerian lithium processing capacity since 2023. A $250 million lithium processing plant built by Jiuling and Canmax in Nasarawa state, with capacity to process 3 million tonnes of lithium ore annually, came online in July 2026. SMM View: The Abuja and Kaduna find extend Nigeria's lithium resource base beyond its established Nasarawa and Kogi pegmatite belts, reinforcing the country's position as a fast-growing West African lithium ore source with an unusually mature downstream processing footprint already backed by Chinese capital. Whether the new reserves convert to bankable, licensed production will hinge on further resource verification and offtake commitments, but the existing processing infrastructure lowers the barrier to bringing new Nigerian lithium ore to market compared with peers still lacking domestic conversion capacity.

[SMM Express] Zimplats shares have come under pressure as weakness in the platinum market weighs on investor sentiment towards the Zimbabwe-focused PGM producer. The decline reflects broader concerns over the impact of platinum-price movements on mining revenues and profitability. The pressure comes despite Zimplats continuing to advance its long-term investment programme in Zimbabwe, including mine development and processing capacity. The company’s latest disclosures show continued progress on expansion and local processing projects, highlighting its longer-term commitment to Zimbabwe’s PGM industry. For the broader PGM market, the development illustrates the sensitivity of producers to commodity-price volatility, with weaker prices potentially affecting cash flows, investment decisions and shareholder returns. At the same time, sustained investment in production and processing capacity could provide longer-term support if platinum-market conditions improve.

SMM, August 10: Metals market: As of the midday close, domestic base metals showed mixed performance. SHFE copper fell 0.52%, SHFE aluminum rose 0.15%, SHFE lead increased 0.41%, SHFE zinc dropped 1.68%, SHFE tin lost 1.34%, and SHFE nickel edged up 0.33%. Additionally, the most-traded foundry aluminum futures edged up, while the most-traded alumina futures edged down. The most-traded lithium carbonate futures rose 1.5%. The most-traded silicon metal futures gained 0.47%. The most-traded polysilicon futures fell 2.54%. Ferrous metals showed mixed performance. Iron ore slipped 0.7%, rebar lost 0.47%, and hot-rolled coil dipped 0.15%. Stainless steel advanced 0.48%. Coking coal and coke: the most-traded coking coal contract rose 1.75% and the most-traded coke contract added 0.43%. In the overseas base metals market, as of 11:43, LME metals broadly rose. LME copper gained 0.3%, LME aluminum climbed 0.69%, LME lead rose 0.29%, and LME zinc edged down 0.09%. LME tin was up 0.52% and LME nickel was down 0.21%. In precious metals, as of 11:43, COMEX gold fell 0.28% and COMEX silver rose 0.36%. In domestic precious metals: SHFE gold gained 1.5% and the most-traded SHFE silver futures rose 2.05%. Additionally, as of the midday close, the most-traded platinum futures rose 0.61% and the most-traded palladium futures fell 0.05%. As of the midday close, the most-traded European container shipping futures fell 2.8% to 1,634 points. As of 11:43 on August 10, selected futures’ midday quotes: Spot and Fundamentals Copper: Today, Guangdong #1 copper cathode spot against the front-month contract: high-quality copper was quoted at a premium of 100 yuan/mt, down 60 yuan/mt from the previous trading day; standard-quality copper was quoted at parity, down 60 yuan/mt; SX-EW copper was quoted at parity, down 60 yuan/mt. The average price of Guangdong #1 copper cathode was 107,945 yuan/mt, down 410 yuan/mt from the previous trading day, while the average price of SX-EW copper was 107,835 yuan/mt, down 410 yuan/mt. In the spot market, Guangdong inventory edged up after the weekend, mainly due to increased arrivals of imported copper... Macro Front Domestic side: [NBS: July CPI up 0.5% YoY, PPI up 3.5% YoY] NBS data showed that in July, due to imported factors, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell 0.1% MoM and rose 0.5% YoY. The core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 0.3% MoM and 0.9% YoY. Overall, CPI maintained a mild increase. China saw increased demand in some sectors, but affected by imported factors and seasonality, the producer price index (PPI) fell 0.7% MoM and rose 3.5% YoY, with the growth rate pulling back 0.6 percentage points from the previous month. In July 2026, China's producer price index rose 3.5% YoY and fell 0.7% MoM. The industrial producer purchase price index rose 5.5% YoY and fell 1.0% MoM. From January to July, the average producer price index rose 1.8% YoY, and the average producer purchase price index rose 2.8% YoY. Dong Lijuan, chief statistician at the Urban Department of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), commented on the CPI and PPI data for July 2026. [PBOC reverse repo operation resulted in a net withdrawal of 45 billion yuan on the day] The PBOC conducted 18 billion yuan in 7-day reverse repo operations today, with 63 billion yuan of 7-day reverse repos maturing, resulting in a net withdrawal of 45 billion yuan on the day. (Jin10 Data App) US dollar: As of 11:43, the US dollar index rose 0.12% to 99.72. According to the CME "FedWatch": The probability of the US Fed keeping rates unchanged by September is 55.6%, and the probability of a cumulative 25 basis point rate hike is 44.4%. The probability of the US Fed keeping rates unchanged by October is 40.8%, the probability of a cumulative 25 basis point rate hike is 47.4%, and the probability of a cumulative 50 basis point rate hike is 11.8%. (Jin10 Data App) Economists surveyed by Reuters expect the US July headline CPI annual rate to fall to 3.4% from 3.5% in June; the core CPI annual rate is expected to fall to 2.5% from 2.6% in the previous month. Economists at Citigroup believe that, as expected, if there is a second consecutive month of softer inflation readings, it would mean more than one month of data pointing to cooling inflationary pressures, essentially ruling out a September rate hike. However, economists also expect a slight increase in core services inflation in July, with prices rising 0.3% MoM. Previously, the data was flat from May to June. Bank of America analysts said a rebound in core services indicators could still keep a September rate hike on the table. Analyst Kate Duguid said that if the latter view prevails and inflation data comes in below expectations, then the Fed rate hike could be postponed to December or later. (Jin10 Data App) The US CPI report released on Wednesday is undoubtedly the most watched data this week. Economists generally expected the annual inflation rate to slow slightly, but core inflation to likely stay high, reflecting persistent price pressures in the services and housing sectors. Based on the latest data, the US Fed remained cautious, emphasizing the need for further confidence that inflation was moving sustainably toward its 2% target before considering interest rate cuts. (Jin10 Data App) Data: Data for the Eurozone's August Sentix Investor Confidence Index and China's July M2 money supply YoY have been released today. On the radar: The Bank of Japan released a summary of opinions from its July monetary policy meeting. Crude Oil: As of 11:43, oil prices rose in both benchmarks, with WTI up 0.67% and Brent up 0.91%. Stalled negotiations between Iran and the US over reopening the Strait of Hormuz supported oil prices. Weekend talks between Iran and Oman failed to reach an agreement on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi explicitly stated that Tehran currently had no direct negotiations with the US. According to media reports, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed until the US met six conditions, including ending military and aggressive actions against Iran and its allies, and providing compensation to Iran. The US insisted that any reopening arrangement must guarantee unimpeded freedom of navigation without conditions like Iranian approvals, fees, or controls. Citigroup noted that attacks by Yemen's Houthi forces on Saudi-affiliated vessels near the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait continued, keeping risks beyond Hormuz also high. (Wall Street CN) Spot Market Overview: ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ►

Platinum prices consolidated today, as the continued release of hawkish signals from the US Fed kept suppressing the upside room for precious metals. During the morning session, the most-traded GFEX platinum contract PT2610 closed at 435.65 yuan/g, up 0.61%, and the price spread between the best ask price of SGE Pt9995 and GFEX PT2610 ended its inversion. Spot market, platinum mainstream quotations were at discounts of 3.5 yuan/g to 2 yuan/g against the PT2610 contract, with quotations varying widely. Downstream consumption remained weak, and most participants purchased as needed based on orders. The mainstream quotation discounts were basically flat compared to yesterday. Overall, no significant improvement was seen in total consumption in the platinum spot market today.

South Africa's chrome ore exports totalled 2,403.95kt in June 2026, easing a marginal 0.90% month-on-month but still standing 38.86% higher than a year earlier — the latest data point in a trend that has defined the country's chromium sector for well over a year: raw ore volumes holding firm or growing, even as the health of domestic ferrochrome smelting remains under separate and distinct pressure. Figure 1: South Africa chrome ore export volume and destination breakdown, June 2026 A Moderating, but Still Elevated, Trend June's figure sits within a narrow band that has now persisted for three consecutive months. Exports measured 2.47 million tonnes in April and 2.43 million tonnes in May, before easing further to 2.404 million tonnes in June — a gentle, incremental decline of roughly 2.7% across the quarter. Read in isolation, that could look like softening demand. Read against the year-on-year comparison, it looks more like a plateau at an unusually high level: April, May and June 2026 volumes have all come in well above 2025's equivalent months, with year-on-year growth running as high as 43% in May and still near 39% in June. In other words, the market has not cooled — it has simply stopped accelerating after an extended period of outsized growth. China's Grip on the Trade Tightens Further China absorbed 67.61% of South Africa's total June export volume, reaffirming its position as by far the largest buyer of South African chrome ore. That concentration is consistent with — and arguably an intensification of — the pattern seen through 2025, when China absorbed a record 12.5 million tonnes of South African chrome ore across the full year, up 23.8% year-on-year, driven by high operating rates at Chinese ferrochrome smelters feeding the country's stainless steel industry. With Chinese buyers taking more than two-thirds of a single month's exports, South Africa's chrome ore trade is now more dependent than ever on the health of one downstream market: Chinese ferrochrome production and, by extension, Chinese stainless steel demand. That concentration cuts both ways — it has underpinned South Africa's export volumes through a period of domestic smelting weakness, but it also leaves the country's ore exporters unusually exposed to any slowdown in Chinese furnace utilisation or stainless steel output. Singapore and the UAE: Trading Gateways, Not End-Use Markets Singapore (7.85%) and the UAE (7.82%) rounded out the top three destinations in June, together accounting for close to a sixth of total export volume. Neither country is a meaningful chrome ore consumer or ferrochrome producer in its own right; both are established global commodity trading and logistics hubs. The UAE in particular is widely positioned — including in the government's own economic development literature — as a re-export and re-distribution gateway to the wider Middle East and African markets, leveraging its logistics infrastructure rather than domestic industrial demand. Singapore plays a broadly similar role in Asian commodity trading flows. Their appearance in the top three is therefore best read as a signal of trading and blending activity — ore passing through intermediary hubs before final delivery — rather than genuine new demand centres competing with China for South African tonnage. The Structural Story Underneath the Numbers The persistence of strong ore exports alongside continued weakness in South Africa's own ferrochrome smelting capacity reflects a structural realignment in the country's chromium value chain rather than a short-term fluctuation. High grid electricity costs, an ageing domestic furnace fleet, and persistent logistics bottlenecks have steadily eroded the competitiveness of local beneficiation, encouraging producers to route an increasing share of mined chrome toward raw-ore export instead. That dynamic was starkly illustrated at the company level in Merafe Resources' H1 2026 production report, released in late July, which showed attributable ferrochrome production collapsing 75% to just 28,000 tonnes on extended smelter suspensions at Wonderkop and Boshoek, while chrome ore production held almost steady at 425,000 tonnes — the ore side of the business continuing to perform even as the alloy side went largely idle. At the same time, South Africa's supply base for chrome ore is arguably broadening rather than narrowing, even as dedicated ferrochrome capacity struggles. Several major platinum group metals producers — Sibanye-Stillwater, Northam Platinum, Eastplats, and project developer Southern Palladium at its Bengwenyama development — have all disclosed plans or results this year showing deliberate growth in chromite by-product recovery from their UG2 orebodies, treating chrome increasingly as a strategic parallel revenue stream rather than an incidental credit. That PGM-sector diversification adds a further source of tonnage to the ore-export pool, reinforcing the same pattern visible in the national trade data: more ore reaching the market, less of it being converted to ferrochrome domestically before it leaves the country. A Policy Response Still Working Through the System This is not an unnoticed trend within South Africa. In June 2025, Cabinet approved a coordinated set of interventions specifically aimed at curbing this shift — including realigning electricity tariffs for the ferrochrome industry, placing chrome ore under export control requiring an ITAC-administered export permit, and developing a chrome ore export tax alongside expanded Special Economic Zone incentives for smelters. The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition subsequently opened the export-tax and permitting framework for public comment in November 2025. More than six months on, June's trade data — still showing raw ore exports running nearly 39% above year-ago levels — suggests that whatever combination of permitting and tariff relief has been implemented so far has not yet meaningfully redirected material away from export and back into domestic beneficiation. Whether the fuller export tax framework, once finalised, changes that balance is likely to be one of the more consequential open questions for South Africa's chrome value chain over the remainder of 2026. Bottom Line June's export data confirms that South Africa's chrome ore trade remains structurally tilted toward raw shipments rather than domestic beneficiation, with China's share of that trade deepening rather than diversifying, and Singapore and the UAE functioning as trading conduits rather than genuine alternative markets. With PGM producers adding to the ore supply base even as ferrochrome smelters remain constrained, and government's export-control measures still working through implementation, the divergence between chrome ore and ferrochrome trade flows looks set to remain a defining feature of South Africa's chromium sector through the rest of 2026.