In economics, there is a surefire way to increase income by more than three and a half times in less than four months without doing anything. You just need to become a monopolist in the global iridium market and at the right moment suspend production.
This happened to Anglo American Platinum's concentrator at the end of 2020, that is, right before the world trade resumed after the harsh covidic restrictions. The plant was shut down for renovation. It is reported that due to a water leak. There was an acute shortage of precious metal. If iridium cost 4148 rubles per gram on December 21, 2020, the price soared to 15258 rubles by Cosmonautics Day (April 12) (Gokhran data), and so it never dropped below 7500.
In December 2022, a new rally may have begun. Iridium was up 41% by the 23rd, after which, however, it stabilized. But no one has guaranteed the world against new reconstructions at enrichment plants or the usual South African miners' strikes. In terms of the price game, union activity can sometimes be very beneficial to business owners.
With copper, for example, or even platinum, such actions would not be so effective. The fact is that we are talking about the rarest precious metal on the planet. Until 2009, the volume of production was not more than 3 tons per year. Since 2010, it began to grow in response to demand and in some years reached 10 tons. At the same time, the price is only going up.
Iridium is irreplaceable in the production of crucibles for growing high-purity metal oxide monocrystals, since it has the highest refractory strength (2300 degrees Celsius). It is indispensable in electronics and automotive industry (spark plugs).
As you know, the Republic of South Africa is like Ali Baba's cave. There are diamonds, platinum, and gold. For the first two items, the country ranks first in the world. It has lost the lead in the third because of the depletion of its reserves. As for iridium, the first position is more than stable. The total world reserves are estimated at about 15 thousand tons, and 10.3 of them are in South Africa.
Iridium is invariably present in the chemical composition of meteorites. That is why the content of the "space" metal in the Earth's crust is so insignificant. Iridium, however, is not only of alien origin, but also of deeply underground magmatic origin. Its relative abundance in South Africa is due to the volcanic pipes located there. In particular, the kimberlites, where diamonds are mined. They are like carrots in the soil - a cone of solidified magma, expanding upward.
There is a hypothesis that during the formation of the Earth from the disk of dense gas the heaviest metal, iridium, sank deeper to form the future core of the planet. Therefore, it is very possible that the rarest metal actually prevails on the Earth, if we consider it as a whole, along with the core.
We cannot yet extract it from there. That leaves us to take a calculator, multiply the mass of the Earth's core by the price of iridium, and marvel at the Earth's capitalization potential.
