Including dwindling silver scrap recycling supplies (likely a major reason why now old US 90% silver coins are getting melted heavily), the silver industry uses about 1 billion oz of physical silver every year. That is basically the same amount of physical silver bullion supposedly sitting in all the transparent silver investment funds, ETFs, and fractional reserve exchanges like the COMEX (watch the video just after the 10 minute make for that chart).
Note too, this year’s solar panel manufacturing and physical silver PV demand is estimated to be about 140 million ounces in 2018 alone.
That is slightly more than JP Morgan has in its silver COMEX warehouse currently.
China continues to diversify her energy sources with solar power.
Physical silver is critical in manufacturing high quality solar panels that endure.
The average solar panel uses about 2/3rds of a troy ounce of silver, or 20 grams of Ag per unit.
The solar industry is on pace to use about 15% of the 2018 silver supply.
Of course China too is the largest player on the physical gold demand side of the equation.
As Chinese housewives / citizens, the Chinese state owned mining industry, China’s PBOC central bank, and Chinese state owned banks have all been buying and mining gold in record amounts following the 2008 financial crisis to today.
How much longer derivative assisted fractional reserve exchanges (e.g. COMEX, London, ETFs, etc.) can keep physical silver and gold prices at respectively cheap levels compared to other financial assets is anyone’s guess.
Final aside regarding recent silver news.
There are newly forming silver industry speculations that even Goldman Sachs is getting in on the physical silver bullion play.
The following was published in Ed Steer’s Gold & Silver Daily this past Thursday March 15, 2018.
It regards long time silver analyst Ted Butler‘s thoughts on the matter of Goldman going long silver bullion:
My speculation is that in reviewing the prospects of buying the Scotia Mocatta unit, Goldman Sachs uncovered the essence of silver short selling Scotia was involved in and, rightfully, decided it wanted no part of it and walked away from the unit. But Goldman’s due diligence may have led it to discover that silver was manipulated in price and represented the investment bargain of the all-time, just as JPMorgan had discovered seven years earlier.
Armed with this new knowledge, Goldman embarked on the most logical next step, namely, buying as much physical silver as it could without disturbing the price. I may be stretching it, but I further think that Goldman’s large stopping of silver in the December contract and subsequent redelivery could have been a “trial run” in which it tested the waters to see how the delivery function worked. Having worked to its satisfaction, Goldman came back for more in March and if any of this speculation is on the mark, will be on the hunt for more silver going forward.
The question is what this new speculation, if accurate, will have on the silver market. If accurate, it’s hard to see how the answer would be other than very bullish. Perhaps the single biggest advantage that JPMorgan has had in its epic accumulation of 700 million oz of physical silver over the past seven years is that it had the game to itself with no competition. On average, JPMorgan has acquired physical silver, through various means, on the order of 8 million oz per month over the past 84 months. Goldman Sachs just picked up 12 million oz in the COMEX March delivery period (plus 2.5 million in December), which according to my speculation messed up JPMorgan’s exclusive silver buying status and caused JPM to back down and liquidate futures contracts on which it planned to take delivery in order to make room for Goldman Sachs.
— Silver analyst Ted Butler: 14 March 2018
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