JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Metal markets analyst Dr David Davis, who passed away this week at the age of 77, was closely associated with platinum, gold and uranium mining and investment for more than four decades. 

Known for his relentless pursuit of data pertaining to global supply and demand specifics, Davis earlier this year calculated, in a 25-page review for Auctus Metal Portfolios of Singapore, that overwhelming demand and declining South African mining supply were on the horizon for platinum in particular. 

Given this scenario, Davis viewed as imperative the need for the platinum group metals mining industry to replace its supply:demand equation with a real market balance equation, amid untraded above-ground China inventory rising to nearly 60% of global platinum above-ground inventories.

He emphasised that platinum stocks outside of China had entered a critical low level stage and decried as inaccurate the understanding of the structural changes in the above-ground inventories of platinum between 2007 and 2022.

Davis was born in Nairobi, Kenya, on 30 March 1947. He attended Nairobi Primary School and went on to Delamere High School, also in Nairobi.

He left Kenya with his family in 1963 and completed his schooling at Ramsey Grammar School in the Isle of Man, where the family had settled.

After school, he went to Loughborough College, Nottingham Trent University, where he obtained an MSc, and finally Aston University, Birmingham, where he did his PhD. He entered the mining industry in Zambia in April 1976. 

He died of a pulmonary embolism following long-standing health issues.

He is survived by his wife, Corne, children Catherine, Nicholas and Samantha, and stepdaughter Nicola Anne Bester.