Current Ruthenium Price and Ruthenium Rate with Chart

The chemical block runs on caprolactam, the precursor to nylon 6, which took the row from 426,000 ounces in 2023 to 567,000 in 2025 — on Chinese capacity. For 2026 Johnson Matthey expects a double-digit decline in Chinese chemical demand as that market moves into oversupply. Beside it sit acetic acid on ruthenium-iridium systems and catalytic wet air oxidation, the one place where the price rise has demonstrably destroyed demand.

On the electronics side, ruthenium oxide resistor pastes go, in the IPA’s words, "in resistor components for almost every chip device"; hard disk drives for data centres are the growth story of 2025 and 2026;. But: today’s recording technology is near a capacity limit and its successor, heat-assisted magnetic recording, "uses much lower amounts of ruthenium". Unlike rhodium’s drivetrain risk, this is a product cycle.

Ruthenium is nowhere mined as a main product, and its share of the ore is geologically predetermined — high in South Africa’s UG2 Chromitite Reef, low in the Merensky. New capacity needs 8 to 18 months for a restart and 6 to 8 years for a deep shaft.

The structural fact that sets ruthenium apart from rhodium is the missing valve. For ruthenium there is no open-loop secondary supply at all in the Johnson Matthey report, and the IPA describes the consequence: "With negligible primary supply or open-loop recycling in the EU, the region is reliant on imports of ruthenium." That, more than any demand story, is why the deficit can run for years rather than quarters; no quantified recycling volume could be obtained at all.

Ruthenium is an industrial raw material, not a monetary metal. There are no coins, no central bank holdings and no documented exchange-traded product: Johnson Matthey reports holdings for platinum, palladium and rhodium but none for ruthenium. What remains is sponge, powder, grains and bars from specialist suppliers, where the market structure applies directly: the measured 30.0% refiner spread against 7.0% for platinum, plus VAT, because the European exemption covers investment gold only. There is no Irish quoting desk to sell into.

Mining shares carry an objection that applies to no other metal on this site quite so sharply. The headline South African revenue metric is the 4E basket — platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold. Ruthenium is not in it; it appears only in the 6E content. Producers benefited "from unusually elevated ruthenium and iridium prices" on top of a 4E basket that rose from about 24,000 to over 40,000 ZAR per ounce in 2025. Anyone buying those shares as a ruthenium proxy is buying a position in which ruthenium does not appear in the standard figure.

Ireland has its own rules here, not a copy of any neighbour’s. Nothing below is tax advice, and every figure is stated as at 25 October 2026.

Value-added tax. Physical ruthenium carries the standard rate of 23% under s. 46(1)(a) VATCA 2010, on all forms alike. Investment gold is relieved by Schedule 1, Part 2, para. 9(1) with s. 90(1) VATCA 2010, enacting articles 344 to 346 of Directive 2006/112/EC — and every element of that definition describes one metal: fineness, minting date, legal tender status and a premium measured against the gold value. The relief turns neither on "bullion" nor on "precious metal" nor on coinage; it turns on the word gold, and there is no counterpart for silver, platinum, palladium or ruthenium. Imports from outside the Union pay on importation instead.

Margin scheme and reverse charge. Section 87(1) VATCA 2010 defines "second-hand goods" "but not including … precious metals and precious stones", and defines precious metals by naming silver, gold and platinum. That is the one place in the Irish code where the identity of the metal matters — and the metals named are not rhodium, ruthenium or iridium. Revenue has published no position and there is no decision on a ruthenium lot, so this page quotes no effective margin rate. On the reverse charge there is a gap in the record rather than a rule: none reaching the platinum group metals could be established here.

Capital gains tax. Section 28 TCA 1997 charges chargeable gains at a flat 33% for disposals on or after 6 December 2012 (s. 28(3), amended by s. 43 FA 2013). It is metal-neutral: neither the charging section nor the chapter of exemptions after it (Part 19, Chapter 7, ss. 601 to 613A) names a metal. And there is no holding period: proceeds, less documented cost, less the expenses of the transaction. Section 601 exempts the first EUR 1,270 of all chargeable gains in the year, not transferable between spouses and not carried forward.

The 33% is the rate for gains of a capital nature; repeated dealing can engage the badges of trade in s. 3(1) TCA 1997 and fall under income tax plus the universal social charge and social insurance. Where that line lies is not quantified anywhere — s. 551 settles only priority, and Revenue publishes neither a transaction count nor an amount, so this page names no figure.

Cash and reporting. The money-laundering threshold is EUR 10,000 and applies to cash only (s. 25(1)(i), Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010), in both directions; a trader dealing only by card or transfer, or only below that figure in cash, is not a designated person at all. There is no general cash limit today, but from 10 July 2027 article 80(1) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 caps business cash payments at EUR 10,000 and article 19(4) lowers the identification threshold to EUR 3,000. Supervision sits with the Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Unit, not the Central Bank, and the cash that has to be declared at the external frontier is defined to include gold only.