Does anyone know when Perth Mint made their 10oz, 1KG and 100oz bars unavailable for purchase? Never thought I'd see the day perth mint couldnt supply silver bars, but that day has come... Currently the only silver bars they are selling ar 1oz minted bars (edit: actually these are out of stock also) , all the cast bars are unavailable and the front page reads as below but doesnt have a date where the status was updated. BULLION - LIMITED STOCK AVAILABLE Due to overwhelming demand for our products during this time we are out of stock of many items and some will be subject to considerable delays before they become available again. Silver Bullion Coins: We have very few products still available and will focus our efforts on manufacturing the 2020 Kangaroo 1oz Silver Bullion Coins Gold Bullion Coins: We currently have 2020 Kangaroo 1oz and 1/10oz Gold Bullion Coins available and this will be our ongoing focus during this period. Cast and Minted bars: Are currently out of stock and at this time we cannot take orders for any size while we work to satisfy the current backlog of orders.
Actually Bullion Silver Bars from Perth Mint are completely unavailable right now, no bars in stock at all.
I remember 7 or 8 years ago the same thing happened at Perth mint. Demand was so high they spend millions upgrading their facilities to cope with demand. I think this time around is more of a supply chain issue?
In January they had a issue due to the bushfires, also in association with upgrades to their facilities to some extent, I guess this is just compounding that...just speculating, could also be that they are smelting and processning metric shit tonne of gold due to international gold demand..the home page just mentions the overwhelming demand
^Their focus is on poured silver bars and 1oz silver coins "Roos" Perth makes a huge qty of blanks for overseas mints, example US quarters. See 2 minutes 28 seconds
I understand business is business, but I feel like purely focusing on minting for international customers and completely abandoning your bullion bars (silver) and all other product lines (silver coins that are not 1oz kanga/kooks) seems like a bad brand move that would (is) frustrate customers, so I have doubts it would just be to satisfy a specific high demand in one niche. Purely from a demand perspective, I could understand but from a brand perspective...dunno...retail demand is probably a very small percentage of their income I guess..
The online depository still has 1000oz bars available. They also sporadically had 1kg and 100oz bars available until a couple of weeks ago.
I'd like to see them decommission their specialty coin lines (2oz-10oz) to focus on generic supply so we can make our money back on lunar.
Saw an interesting interview with the Perth Mint CEO in 2019 where he mentioend they refine 350 Tonnes of Gold and 600 Tonnes of Silver every year. I thought the ratio was interesting...
I don't know about you but I would have thought silver would be significantly larger. No wonder there are shortages during a demand spike. Demand for invest(able) silver should be x10 + higher simply due to affordability of low oz quantities. They would need a whole other factory or ten to service the coming demand.
I havent heard, but in relation to the coinage, one of the main reasons they were minting kangas and not kooks etc is that the Capsuling is very labor / hands on intensive which made it risky during the pandemic.
Chart below starts in Apr 2018 - Current. Sold HUGE volume in April (leading up to Covid?), seems to have come off significantly though during the pandemic.
There's silver 1oz minted bars; and kilo kooks&koalas, 10oz kooks, 1oz kooks atm. Was also looking at gold and seems 1/10oz & 1/4oz kangas&mice, 1/2oz & 1 oz kangas are still available, as are 1oz emus and 2oz&10oz mice Minted gold available in all sizes, cast bars in none.