There was a time when gold and platinum seemed joined at the hip, but those days are long gone and, currently, platinum would be doing brilliantly if its price could just keep up with gold. Why the lapse? At last month’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention, Bank of America Merrill Lynch put platinum’s price lapse down to a lack of supply discipline and forecast a price rally if 300 000 oz to 400 000 oz is taken out of the market. Should South Africa cut back? Lonmin CEO Ben Magara believes it should. “As an industry, we need to go for it. We must be bold about cutting supply. The price is telling us that we’re in oversupply and we’ve got to react” is his comment on page 12.