Where Is Rhodium Found? Mines, Countries and Shares

Rhodium is found in platinum-group metal (PGM) ore and nickel-copper sulphide ore, and nowhere else at mining scale. South Africa’s Bushveld Complex supplies over 80% of mined rhodium, Russia’s Norilsk district about 9%, Zimbabwe’s Great Dyke about 6% and North America about 3%, according to Johnson Matthey data compiled by the International Platinum Group Metals Association (IPA) rhodium factsheet (May 2026). World mine output is only about 22 tonnes a year. No mine is built for rhodium alone, so this page follows the platinum and nickel mines that produce it.

Below you will find the share of each country, the mines and reef layers behind the numbers, how much PGM ore is left, where rhodium turns up in scrap, a dated price with a five-year chart, and a calculator for the rhodium in a catalytic converter.

Where is rhodium found in the world?

Four regions account for nearly all mined rhodium. The shares below are for primary (mined) supply in 2025, from Johnson Matthey’s January 2026 data as reproduced in the IPA factsheet.

The shares add to at least 98% (South Africa is reported only as over 80%), with small amounts from other countries. The same IPA factsheet says rhodium makes up only 5% of PGM metal produced by mass, while platinum and palladium together make up 86%. That ratio is why rhodium follows the platinum and palladium mines instead of leading them.

Where is rhodium mined? Country by country

South Africa: the Bushveld Complex

The Bushveld Complex is a huge layered igneous intrusion in the north of South Africa. Its metal-rich layers are called reefs. The IPA factsheet names three. The Merensky Reef has mill-head grades (the grade of the ore as it enters the mill) of about 4 to 7 grams per tonne (g/t, the same as parts per million) of six PGM elements. The UG2 Reef is a chromite layer with typical mined grades of 2.5 to 4 g/t of four elements, and it holds more rhodium than the Merensky Reef. The IPA says UG2 has the highest rhodium content of any PGM-bearing ore in the world. The Platreef, the northern outcrop, is mined by open pit and is lower in rhodium than the other two.

USGS puts South Africa’s PGM reserves at 63,000 tonnes, about 83% of the world total, in its Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026. The IPA lists Valterra Platinum, Sibanye-Stillwater and Impala Platinum as operators with fully integrated mine-to-metal processing, and Northam as a producer that sends concentrate to Europe for final PGM refining.

Russia: Norilsk-Talnakh

Norilsk-Talnakh in Siberia is a nickel-copper sulphide district. Rhodium comes out with the nickel and copper, and the ore holds much less rhodium than the South African reefs, so Russia supplies only 9% of the world total (IPA, May 2026). The IPA adds that Nornickel’s metal is refined by third parties in Russia. The USGS reports Russian PGM reserves of 11,000 tonnes, the second largest after South Africa.

Zimbabwe: the Great Dyke

The Great Dyke runs north to south across Zimbabwe. It is a layered mafic-to-ultramafic complex (rock rich in magnesium and iron) that the IPA compares with the Merensky Reef, though the intrusion is much smaller. Zimbabwe supplies 6% of mined rhodium and holds PGM reserves of 1,300 tonnes (USGS, 2026). Impala Platinum’s September 2026 results release lists Zimplats and Mimosa among its Great Dyke operations.

United States and Canada

The USGS says one company in Montana mined and processed PGMs in 2025, and its mine production table lists palladium and platinum only (6,200 kg and 1,800 kg estimated for 2025). Rhodium is not listed as a US mine product. The United States instead imported about 14,000 kg of rhodium in 2025, much of it for autocatalysts. The J-M Reef in Montana is mined for palladium and platinum (about 78% palladium and 22% platinum, per the operator), and USGS reports no rhodium output there.

In Canada, PGMs come as by-products of nickel and copper. The Northern Miner reports that the USGS places the Sudbury Basin in Ontario alongside Norilsk-Talnakh as the two giant nickel-copper sulphide districts. Sudbury formed about 1.85 billion years ago after a large meteorite impact, and its ore carries cobalt, platinum, palladium, gold and silver. Impala Platinum also runs Impala Canada on the Canadian Shield. USGS lists Canadian PGM reserves of 310 tonnes and US reserves of 590 tonnes.

Mines and companies to know

Rhodium mines are PGM mines, so the names to search are company operations. Impala Platinum (Implats) describes itself as working across three PGM-bearing ore bodies: the Bushveld Complex, the Great Dyke and the Canadian Shield. Its six operations are Impala Rustenburg, Zimplats, Marula, Impala Canada, Mimosa and Two Rivers, and it says it contributes about 20% of annual global primary PGM production (Implats release, 3 September 2026). Valterra Platinum and Sibanye-Stillwater are the other large integrated producers named by the IPA. Sibanye-Stillwater also owns the two Montana mines, Stillwater and East Boulder, which mine the J-M Reef (Sibanye-Stillwater).

Grades in commercial PGM deposits typically run from 1 to 10 g/t of combined PGMs and gold, the IPA says, citing USGS authors. A gram per tonne is one part per million. Rhodium is only a small slice of that total.

Rhodium mine supply and reserves in charts

The charts show who mines rhodium today and where the PGM ore sits. Reserves are reported for the whole PGM group, not for rhodium alone, because national surveys do not split them by metal. Company resource statements are the place to look for a per-metal split on a single mine.

Chart

Share of mined rhodium by region

Percent of primary supply, 2025; South Africa shown as the reported floor (over 80%)

Why rhodium is never mined on its own

Platinum-group metals are among the rarest elements in the Earth’s crust, at about 1.5 parts per billion in the upper continental crust and 3.7 in the lower crust, and rhodium is only 5% of the PGMs mined (IPA). At that level a deposit cannot pay for itself on rhodium. The metal is worth mining only because the same ore already pays for platinum, palladium or nickel. The IPA says rhodium is always a by-product, although its value share is much higher than its weight share.

Two practical results follow:

• Supply does not respond to the rhodium price. If rhodium spikes, miners cannot dig more of it without digging more platinum or nickel ore.
• Ore mix matters. A tonne of UG2 ore carries more rhodium than a tonne of Platreef or Norilsk ore, so the same tonnage of rock gives very different rhodium output.

Sulphide ores also create smelter gases. Impala Platinum’s results release says Zimplats resumed its sulphur dioxide mitigation work. For background on how sulphur is recovered, see our guides to sulfur mining extraction methods and sulfur ore and mine trends.

After mining, the ore is milled, floated into a concentrate, smelted, and refined. The IPA says several processing stages are needed because extracted ores contain so little rhodium, and rhodium is marketed only in refined form (sponge or salts).

▶ A clay nugget follows ore from rock to refined metal: drilling, crushing, leaching, refining. The same mine-to-refinery chain delivers rhodium. · 5:27

How much PGM ore is left? Reserves by country

USGS estimates world PGM reserves at more than 76,000 tonnes and world resources at more than 100,000 tonnes, with the largest in the Bushveld Complex (Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026). South Africa’s 63,000 tonnes is about 83% of that world total.

Chart

PGM reserves by country

Thousand tonnes of contained platinum-group metals (all six metals together)

The IPA states that known deposits are likely to support mining for many decades, and that future supply will depend on the same South African and Russian deposits. It also warns that the split among the individual PGMs in unmined ground is not always well defined, so a rhodium-only reserve for a country does not exist in official statistics.

Rhodium price today and what moves it

Kitco showed a rhodium bid of US$8,625 per troy ounce (about US$277 per gram) on 26 October 2026 at 6:35 a.m. Eastern time (Kitco rhodium chart). Kitco’s ask on the same quote was US$9,625, so the dealer spread was US$1,000. Kitco notes that rhodium has no exchange-traded futures market. Dealers trade it directly, so quotes can jump between updates. A troy ounce is 31.1035 grams.

Chart

Average rhodium price per year

US$ per troy ounce; 2025 is a USGS estimate

The USGS gives a yearly average, which smooths out those jumps. The estimated 2025 average of US$5,800 per ounce was 24% above 2024, and the chart shows how far the price has fallen from the 2021 peak. The agency links the rise to lower production and higher demand from the hard-disk and chemical catalyst industries, and to platinum being replaced in car catalysts.

Demand is the other half of the picture. The IPA reports global rhodium demand of 33 tonnes in 2025, with autocatalysts taking 85%, chemical catalysts 9% and glass 4%. Mine supply is about 22 tonnes, and recycled metal covers much of the gap. Johnson Matthey expects demand to fall 6% in 2026 as gasoline car output declines (Johnson Matthey, May 2026), and Impala Platinum expects the rhodium market to be broadly balanced. The IPA notes that after the price passed US$10,000 per ounce in 2008, carmakers cut their use as far as they could.

Rhodium in scrap and catalytic converters

Outside the mine, the biggest stock of rhodium is in used catalytic converters. A typical converter holds 1 to 2 grams of rhodium, plus 3 to 7 grams of platinum and 2 to 7 grams of palladium, according to AutoNation Mobile Service; larger vehicles can hold more. Other rhodium scrap comes from three industrial sources the IPA describes:

• Platinum-rhodium gauzes used to make nitric acid, which hold about 3 to 10% rhodium.
• Platinum-rhodium alloy glass-fibre bushings and stirrers, which hold about 5 to 20% rhodium.
• Thermocouple wires and rhodium-plated electrical contacts.

The IPA says closed-loop recycling, where a user returns spent material to the supplier, makes up 75% of rhodium recycling. Scrap recovery is usually more attractive when the price is high. Use the calculator to see what the rhodium in your converters is worth before refining and buyer discounts.

Native rhodium and rhodium minerals

In nature, rhodium usually occurs as a native metal (uncombined) or as an alloy with other platinum-group metals, and only rarely in compounds, according to Wikipedia’s rhodium entry. Few rhodium minerals are known. One example is miassite, a rhodium sulphide with the formula Rh17S15. Rhodium has one stable isotope, rhodium-103.

The element was found in crude platinum ore. William Hyde Wollaston discovered it in 1803, soon after palladium, and named it from the Greek rhodon, meaning rose, for the colour of its salts (Royal Society of Chemistry). Wikipedia says he presumably used platinum ore from South America. Today that history has no mining use, because the supply comes from the layered intrusions above.

Calculator: rhodium value in your converters

Rhodium prices move daily, so enter today’s figure. The calculator multiplies grams of rhodium by the price per gram and then applies a payout share, because scrap buyers pay below spot after assay and refining.

How rhodium-bearing ground is found

Since rhodium only occurs inside PGM and nickel-copper sulphide ore, exploring for it means exploring for layered intrusions and magmatic sulphide systems. Explorers screen large areas first and drill later. Satellite imagery cannot see rhodium itself. It can map rock units, structures and surface alteration, which helps a geologist decide where to send a field crew. Farmonaut’s satellite-based mineral detection covers nickel and copper targets, and you can request a quote for your licence area.

Before staking or buying ground, check the licence holder, the deposit type, and published assays. Our guides to the rarest metals on Earth, the rarest minerals and where copper is found cover neighbouring topics. Mines also need careful water management.

▶ Remote sensing for mining explained in three minutes, without jargon. · 2:01

Frequently asked questions

Where is rhodium found?

Rhodium is found in platinum-group metal ore and nickel-copper sulphide ore. South Africa’s Bushveld Complex supplies over 80% of mined rhodium, followed by Russia (9%), Zimbabwe (6%) and North America (3%) (IPA, May 2026).

Where is rhodium mined?

It is mined in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa, at Norilsk-Talnakh in Russia, in the Great Dyke of Zimbabwe, and in Canada and the United States as a minor by-product. Every one of these sites is a platinum, palladium or nickel operation.

Where can you find rhodium in the United States?

The USGS mine production table for the United States lists palladium and platinum from Montana’s J-M Reef, but not rhodium. The United States relied on imports of about 14,000 kg of rhodium in 2025, and recycled catalytic converters are a further source.

Which country has the most rhodium?

South Africa. It supplies over 80% of mined rhodium and holds about 83% of world PGM reserves, 63,000 of more than 76,000 tonnes (USGS, 2026). Reserves are reported for all PGMs together, not for rhodium alone.

Can rhodium be mined on its own?

No. Rhodium is among the rarest PGMs in the crust (IPA, May 2026), so no known deposit can be worked for rhodium alone. It is always recovered as a by-product during the refining of platinum, palladium or nickel ore.

Where is rhodium found in scrap?

Mostly in catalytic converters, at about 1 to 2 grams each. Platinum-rhodium gauzes for nitric acid, glass-fibre bushings, thermocouple wire and electrical contacts are the other main scrap sources.

How much rhodium is mined each year?

About 22 tonnes a year in recent years, against global demand of 33 tonnes in 2025 (IPA, citing Johnson Matthey). Recycling and stocks fill the difference.

Why is rhodium so expensive?

It is very rare, comes only as a by-product from a few mines, and is especially important in car catalysts for cutting nitrogen oxides (NOx). Kitco quoted a bid of US$8,625 per ounce on 26 October 2026, and the USGS puts the 2025 average at US$5,800.

Is rhodium found in Canada?

Yes, in small amounts. Canadian PGMs come with nickel and copper at Sudbury and from Impala Canada’s operation. North America as a whole supplies about 3% of mined rhodium.

Who discovered rhodium?

William Hyde Wollaston discovered rhodium in 1803 in crude platinum ore (Royal Society of Chemistry).

Not investment advice. Prices and shares change; check the sources before you rely on any figure.