The World Platinum Investment Council (WPIC) forecasts that platinum demand in manufacturing of hard disc drives (HDDs), semiconductors and sensors is growing thanks to the need for more data storage capacity.
Historically, electronics demand for platinum has mainly comprised its use in hard disk drives. In 2024, platinum consumption in this sector reached an estimated 90 000 oz and accounted for about 1% of total platinum demand.
This year, electrical demand for platinum is forecast to grow by 2% to 92 000 oz as the HDD market recovers following a period of weakness between 2019 and 2023.
Even though a newer generation of data storage, the solid-state drives (SSDs), are considered superior to older HDD tech thanks to higher speeds, WPIC argues that HDDs are lower cost than SSDs on a per gigabyte basis, presenting an alternative for organisations needing to store large amounts of data.
HDDs are data storage devices comprised of magnetic platters coated with a platinum alloy media to improve thermal and magnetic stability. HDD market has benefited from the introduction of heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology, which has improved storage, or ‘areal’ density; growing storage capacity without increasing HDD size or power requirements.
“These latter two features are of particular interest to the data storage segment which is deploying a broad range of solutions to better manage energy efficiency and storage capacity to reduce its carbon footprint,” WPIC said.
A wider adoption of AI may generate strong global demand for semiconductors and sensors such as thermal cameras, ultrasonic sensors, photocells, inductive sensors, radar sensors and motion sensors. A large variety of those devices contain platinum-coated thin-films and other platinum products.
Theodor Lisovoy, Managing Editor, Rough&Polished
