While gold prices have been grabbing the headlines, sister metal silver has also been making new all-time highs. Although silver has risen much more quietly, its recent gains are part of a deep underlying uptrend that coincides with new supply badly lagging record demand, putting the global market on track for its 7th consecutive deficit in 2025.
“Silver’s new all-time highs have come under the radar for two reasons,” explains Adrian Ash, director of research at world-leading precious metals marketplace BullionVault.
“First, silver has set fresh records outside the US Dollar, leaving headline writers to miss its new highs in terms of other currencies including the Pound. Second, and rather than shooting the lights out like gold has over the past 12 months, the price of silver has risen to new annual and month-average records without hitting fresh daily highs.”
On an annual average basis, silver priced in the UK Pound rose 17.6% in 2024 to set a new all-time high of £22.10 per Troy ounce. So far this year, silver’s underlying uptrend has risen again, taking the industrially-useful precious metal to an average above £25 per ounce since the start of January.
“Silver’s stealth bull market comes as global mine output lags behind demand,” says Ash at West London fintech BullionVault, which now cares for more than £915 million in silver alongside £3.1 billion in gold for more than 110,000 private investors worldwide,
“Silver in 2025 is set to show a deficit of new supply versus demand for the 7th year in a row. That gap is being driven by record industrial and technological uses, which account for almost 60% of silver’s annual demand, running from electrics and electronics to brazing alloys, the defence sector, the chemicals industry and solar energy. That contrasts with less than 10% productive use for gold.”
BullionVault’s analysis of data published by industry association the Silver Institute shows the balance of mine output over total demand – including investment products such as silver-backed ETFs – net of ‘scrap’ supply from unwanted jewellery, industrial recycling, plus coins and small bars.
Compared to that figure for net demand, silver mine output worldwide lagged by 25.3% in 2024.
