SWITZERLAND October 23 2014 3:02 PMTweet 
ZURICH (Scrap Register): The latest Swiss trade data indicates that the palladium market remained tight in Q3 14 – exports more than doubled, whereas imports tumbled by more than 50% month-on-month in September.

Meanwhile, palladium shipments from Russia remained near their subdued trend of around 6.56koz. This reinforces Barclays expectation for a sizable deficit this year and next, and supports their view that PGM prices as a whole still look to be favourable buying opportunities.

September palladium shipments from Russia into Switzerland came in at 6.56 kilo ounce – right around the trend seen over the past few years and were once again made up entirely of semi-manufactured shipments.

Barclays remains of the view that there is unlikely to be a return to the consistently elevated shipments seen over most of the past decade and they reiterate their expectations for the palladium market to deliver a sizable deficit this year and for Russian state stock releases to be limited.

In fact, the last four spikes over the past two years were of declining volume, falling 30-55% in each instance. While a spike in shipments is not our base case, in Barclays view, if one were to materialize we would expect it to occur in H1 15. The last Q4 spike was in 2011, while the largest spikes over the past three years have all been in H1.

Outside of these spikes, shipments have continued to trend lower with the 6.4-6.6koz median shipment dominating since the beginning of 2011 – a trend we think looks likely to continue.