No silver shortage: we're working hard to meet demand
Message from The Perth Mint Chief Commercial Officer Sawan Tanna
These are extraordinary times for the precious metals market. Gold and silver prices continue to set new records, with gold up 65% in US dollar terms in the year to 31 December 2025 and silver rising almost 150% USD for the year. That momentum has continued into 2026.
At The Perth Mint we have seen historically high demand for bullion and minted products since mid-2025 as many investors turn to gold and silver as safe-haven assets amid ongoing global uncertainty.
This demand is across all retail and institutional channels, including in-person and online retail, online depository and our ASX-listed gold exchange traded product, PMGOLD.
There has been extraordinary interest in our range of silver bullion products in particular, resulting in unprecedented logistical and production challenges in meeting the volume of orders. To avoid disappointing customers, we have limited the availability of some silver products.
As Australia’s leading precious metals refinery, we can assure you there is no shortage of silver, it just isn’t in the specific forms being requested by our customers which is putting pressure on manufacturing operations. The Perth Mint is completely focused on meeting the surge while maintaining the highest standards for precision and quality.
Our inspection, packing and dispatching processes are highly manual. Every coin, bar and numismatic product is individually inspected, and items require careful handling as they are placed into sleeves, tubes or boxes.
We are currently increasing staffing resources in our coin production, order fulfilment and customer service areas to speed up these processes.
Our production efforts are concentrated on core silver products including the one ounce Kangaroo and Kookaburra coins and one kilogram cast bars. We are continuing production of all our silver products, however there may be longer delays on some items as we work through all logistics.
Back orders have been turned off temporarily on certain lines, such as one kilogram silver cast bars. We have also made the decision to limit the size of orders on some popular lines, including one kilogram cast silver bars and one kilogram silver coins, and some products will be limited to in-store sales to avoid disappointing customers.
In-store transactions at our East Perth premises are welcome, but please be aware of potentially long wait times for bullion purchases due to the influx of visitors and customers. We advise you to arrive early in the day.
We acknowledge this situation is causing frustration for some of our customers and apologise for the inconvenience. The team here at The Perth Mint is focused on doing everything possible to meet the expectations of all our customers.
We appreciate your patience and thank you for your continued support of The Perth Mint.
