LBMA's Sister, With a Narrower Job
The LPPM formed alongside the LBMA in the same era and shares much of its membership and its ICE-run auction technology, but its remit stops at two metals: platinum and palladium.
Priced by Auction, Twice a Day
Like LBMA's gold price, the LPPM Platinum and Palladium Price is set by an electronic auction: participants submit buy and sell volumes at a proposed price, the price adjusts until supply and demand roughly balance, and the process repeats until it converges on a number everyone can settle contracts against.
A Market Run by Catalytic Converters, Not Jewellers
Platinum and palladium demand is dominated by automotive catalytic converters, which clean vehicle exhaust, rather than investment or jewellery the way gold is. That means LPPM prices move on car production numbers and emissions regulations far more than on wedding season or safe-haven buying.
Two Countries Hold the Cards
South Africa supplies roughly seventy percent of the world's mined platinum, and Russia's Nornickel is the dominant palladium producer — so LPPM prices are unusually sensitive to single-country events, from South African power cuts hitting mine output to sanctions risk around Russian supply.
Contracts & Products Traded
Like its LBMA sibling, the LPPM isn't a futures exchange — trading runs over the counter in physical platinum and palladium bars and plates, unallocated storage accounts, forwards, and metal loans arranged directly between member banks and refiners. Good Delivery bars here are far smaller than gold's 400-ounce standard, typically a few kilograms each, reflecting platinum and palladium's much higher per-gram value and a buyer base built around industrial catalytic-converter demand rather than bar hoarding. The one standardized output is the daily LPPM Platinum and Palladium Price, set by ICE's electronic auction — the benchmark number the market actually trades against, even though no single contract or lot size defines the underlying market.
Role in Global Price Discovery
The LPPM benchmark is what auto manufacturers, catalytic-converter recyclers and mining royalty contracts reference when pricing platinum and palladium, and it's also the settlement anchor NYMEX platinum and palladium futures ultimately trace back to. That's notable because neither South Africa nor Russia — the two countries that actually mine most of the world's supply — hosts the pricing mechanism; London's refining, vaulting and settlement infrastructure keeps price discovery there despite the metal itself coming from thousands of miles away. In the global relay, LPPM trades on the same London clock as LBMA gold and silver, giving platinum-group metals their own dedicated slot in the day's Western session.
Palladium actually traded above gold for most of 2019–2022 — a first in the metal's history — purely because tightening emissions rules made it more valuable under a car's hood than around someone's neck.
Sources
- South Africa supplies roughly 70% of world mined platinum — Platinum in South Africa (2024)
- Russia's Nornickel is the dominant palladium producer — Distribution of global palladium production by producer (2023)
- Palladium traded above gold for most of 2019-2022 — Highest Palladium Price History (2022)
