Milan: As the countdown to the 2024 CIBJO Congress in Shanghai continues, the third pre-Congress Special Report has been released. Prepared by the CIBJO Precious Metals Commission headed by Vaishali Banerjee, Managing Director of PGI India, the report offers a comprehensive analysis of the gold, platinum, palladium, and silver markets over the past year.

The group of precious metals showed differing movement, Banerjee wrote, but the trends that influence prices and demand were generally from outside the jewellery industry. Some were investment-driven and others industrial, with the rapid transformation of electric car manufacturing being a quite decisive factor.

“Investment was the overarching theme for gold in 2023 both for institutional and retail investors,” she noted. “The gold price scored several record highs in the year and has continued the momentum. This is projected to lead to a slowdown in investment and consumption demand in 2024.”

“For platinum, automative and industrial demand led the growth in 2023,” Ms. Vaishali stated. Jewellery witnessed a marginal decline due to lowering demand in China. “Platinum’s price is expected to stay range bound at similar levels as 2023 and, while the growth of automative demand is forecasted to be modest, the jewellery demand is set to recover in 2024.”

Palladium had a challenging year and is likely to continue to witness a decline in 2024, she reported, but silver had a year of robust industrial demand last year, and it is projected to see modest growth in demand both from the industrial and jewellery sectors in 2024.

The report also focuses on environmental and social concerns that are increasingly important in shaping investment and policy decisions, with financial markets creating ESG indices to build ethical investing, and growing consumer and societal expectations being the key drivers for responsibly sourced metal for precious jewellery.

“Across categories there has been a significant focus on initiatives to build sustainability and responsibility for the precious metals industry,” Banerjee wrote.