Midweek buying by speculators and some commercial customers helped rhodium recover from a selloff early in the week, leaving price levels virtually unchanged week on week Friday.
The Platts New York Dealer rhodium price range narrowed to $1,075-$1,125/oz this week from $1,070-$1,130/oz last week.
Some sources put the high end of the range at $1,100, citing a midweek cut in the base prices of UK refining major Johnson Matthey. But German refining major Engelhard Materials Services held its base price at $1,120.
"It definitely has seen some strong selling," one PGM refiner said. "As we kicked off the week, we saw more selling. But yesterday and we saw some strong interest coming back into the market," he said Thursday.
"There was some pretty heavy trading back and forth," he added.
A second PGM refiner agreed, saying he believed that some of the buying that occurred over the last two days had originated from industrial consumers in eastern Asia as well as speculators eyeing the impasse in the South African labor negotiations.
An agreement in principle was reached early Thursday between AMCU leaders and the three main South African PGM miners: Anglo American Platinum, Lonmin and Impala Platinum.
Rank-and-file AMCU members initially rejected the deal late Thursday, but then gave indications of changing their position, calling on AMCU President Joseph Mathunjwa to sign the agreement.
Company management and union officials were scheduled to meet again Friday to discuss outstanding issues.
The buying prompted Johnson Matthey to raise its rhodium base price by $10 to $1,110 by the end of the week. But as with previous upswings, the rally was capped by steadily lower offers from scrap recyclers, sources said.
Rhodium recycled from spent catalytic converters accounts for about 25-30% of total global supply annually.
