One Quarter Separates a Resource Update From the Study It Feeds

• Roughly 90% of the world's platinum group element (PGE) reserves are located in South Africa.
• Only two major greenfield PGE mines are expected to enter near-term production.
• An engineering company was appointed for the Pedra Branca study in the fourth quarter of 2025.
• Pedra Branca's inferred estimate has an effective date of March 8, 2022, and excludes five zones drilled in 2023.
• The resource update that would bring those zones into the estimate is targeted for the third quarter of 2026, one quarter ahead of the study.

Platinum and palladium have run a multi-year deficit of 500,000 to 700,000 ounces, and above-ground stocks have been cut by 42%, which leaves less than five months of coverage. The projects that could add new supply are at the stage where an economic study sets out a mine plan and an economic case for a deposit.

For the listed platinum group element (PGE) development projects, progress is read through a single marker: the most advanced technical study each has reached. That marker is disclosed together with the year it was reached. The resource estimate that fed it is not disclosed in the same place, and the two can be years apart.

The distinction changes how a milestone should be read. A preliminary economic assessment (PEA) puts a mine plan and an economic case around a deposit, and is read against the resource estimate it is built on.

Concentration & Scarcity in Platinum Supply

The supply base for platinum group metals is geographically narrow and contracting at the producing end. Roughly 90% of the world's PGE reserves are located in South Africa. Several major platinum operations have closed or been suspended since 2016, and only two major greenfield PGE mines are expected to enter near-term production. 

Demand has not thinned to match. Automotive catalysts account for around 40% of total platinum demand and around 80% of all palladium and rhodium demand, and each hybrid vehicle uses 10 to 20% more PGEs than an internal combustion vehicle. Global new vehicle sales in 2025 are split 55% internal combustion, 25% electric, and 20% hybrid, and the hybrid share is growing fastest. Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and Porsche have scaled back electric vehicle plans in favor of hybrids.

Two smaller demand pools exert outsized leverage on a market this tight. Jewelry consumes around 70 million ounces of gold a year against around 2 million ounces of platinum, and switching 1% of current gold jewelry demand to platinum would double an annual platinum supply deficit of around 700,000 ounces. Chinese demand for physical platinum bars and coins has grown from nearly zero in 2019 to more than 400,000 ounces in 2025. 

How Developers Sequence Resource Updates & Studies

Five listed PGE development projects outside the producing South African operations show the sequence in progress, each placed by its most advanced technical study. Platinum Group Metals completed a definitive feasibility study for the Waterberg joint venture in South Africa in 2024, with 23.4 million ounces of palladium, platinum, gold, and rhodium in 246 million tonnes (Mt) of proven and probable reserves grading 2.96 grams per tonne (g/t). Generation Mining completed a feasibility study on the Marathon project in Ontario in 2025, on 2.6 million ounces of palladium and 0.8 million ounces of platinum in 128 Mt of proven and probable reserves. Bravo Mining completed a preliminary economic assessment for the Luanga project in Pará, Brazil, in 2025, reporting 10.4 million ounces of palladium equivalent in 158 Mt of measured and indicated resources, plus 5.0 million ounces in 58 Mt of inferred material.

Two of the five hold inferred resources only and have published no economic study at all. Their most recent technical disclosure is a resource estimate, dated 2022 in one case and 2023 in the other, and the mine plan, capital cost, and operating cost that a study would establish do not yet exist for either. 

Grades across the group are reported on different bases, each defined by the issuer's own technical disclosure, so the projects are not comparable on a grade basis. What is comparable is position in the sequence, and each of the five follows the same sequence: a resource estimate, then a study built on it, then licensing.

What a Study's Completion Date Does Not Disclose

A study is built on a resource estimate with its own effective date, and the two are disclosed separately. The completion date of a study, on its own, does not establish which estimate lies beneath it.

The same separation appears further back in the sequence. Stillwater Critical Minerals holds 2.0 million ounces of palladium and 1.3 million ounces of platinum in 254 Mt of inferred resources at its Stillwater West project in Montana, with the estimate dated 2023 and no economic study published since.

Public disclosure makes it difficult to size the gap from the outside. Each of the five projects states its stage and the year that stage was reached. For the three that have completed an economic study, the effective date of the resource estimate underneath it is not stated. A reader can establish which project is furthest along, but cannot establish, for the three with completed studies, how current the data behind that position is.

A 2022 Estimate & a 2026 Study at Pedra Branca 

One project in the group publishes both dates, which makes it the clearest case available. ValOre Metals Corp. (TSXV: VO | OTCQB: KVLQF | FSE: KEQ0) holds the 51,096-hectare Pedra Branca project in Ceará State, Brazil, a 4-hour drive on paved highway from the deep water port and international airport at Fortaleza. Its inferred resource totals 2.2 million ounces of combined palladium, platinum, and gold in 63.3 Mt grading 1.08 g/t, spread across 7 near-surface zones supported by more than 40,000 metres (m) of drilling. Four core deposits, Esbarro, Curiu, Cedro, and Cana Brava, together hold more than 1 million ounces, and the Trapia and Massape zones to the south hold more than 1 million ounces between them.

That estimate has an effective date of March 8, 2022. Five further exploration zones were drilled in 2023, totaling more than 6,000 m, and none of them is included in it. The 2023 program also produced a new discovery at the Salvador target. ValOre drilled 23,534 m between 2020 and 2024, and previous operators drilled 30,000 m before that, and the estimate reflects only the work completed to its effective date. 

Vice President Exploration of ValOre Metals Corp., Thiago Diniz, walks through the clock a Brazilian claim puts on an explorer before permitting begins:

"You have three years to explore and to advance the targets, extendable for additional three years, and then that gets you to a moment in time where you have developed and advanced your targets and build a resource around, and then thinking about permitting."

The company has put its two milestones one quarter apart. A resource update covering the recently drilled targets is targeted for the third quarter of 2026, and the PEA for the fourth quarter of the same year. An engineering company was appointed for the study in the fourth quarter of 2025. Metallurgical and engineering work is planned to advance development planning, and metallurgical testwork continues in partnership with the University of Cape Town. Historical core from the Curiu, Esbarro, and Cedro deposits is being re-logged to refine mineralization controls and mine-planning assumptions. 

Claim Terms & State-Level Permitting in Brazil

Where a project sits in the exploration cycle determines which permits bind it, and at Pedra Branca's stage, the binding ones are not the difficult ones. Management says exploration and drilling permits are not a significant constraint on the project and that Ceará is not a traditional mining state, unlike other Brazilian states. Management also describes the project area as a dry region, so water and vegetation are not primary constraints on exploration work.

Diniz traces the licensing groundwork back to the team's first days on the property:

"Since the very first moment we stepped our feet in the Pedra Branca project, we started to understand that community, to understand the risks surrounding our projects, being in traditional communities or water supply or whatever is the issue that you need to face that early, and start engaging with the regulators already."

Management says the regulator to watch is probably at the state rather than the federal level, and identifies agency efficiency as the area needing improvement as the number of Brazilian projects seeking licenses rises. The wider jurisdiction supports that reading: stable regulatory frameworks support investment and simplify approvals; Brazil is a top-10 global gold producer at around $3.8 billion in annual output, growing toward more than $6 billion by 2030; and the country now graduates more mining engineers than the United States and Canada combined.

Industry Outlook

The deficit that makes these projects relevant does not resolve within the study cycle. Platinum is in a supply deficit every year from 2023 through 2029 on current forecasts, while palladium moves from a deficit through 2026 into surplus from 2027. Studies completed over the next two years will be read for what they establish about buildability, not for whether the price signal exists.

At Pedra Branca, licensing and an environmental impact assessment (EIA) are targeted for the first quarter of 2027, the quarter after the study. The study therefore falls between the resource update and the start of licensing.

The practical consequence for anyone tracking the small group of listed PGE developers is that the resource update, ahead of a study, deserves the same attention as the study itself.

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