I have often wondered just how much the EFP spread needs to be in order for an actor to realize an arbitrage profit for buying COMEX silver, shipping it the UK and selling it at the LBMA.
Per Grok:
a 20ft shipping container holds around 643,015 troy ounces (~20 metric tons)
@ $60/ozt this is ~$38.6M
Shipping that container by ocean freight to the UK costs ~$235K in fixed costs (freight, inland transport, handling, misc) and ~$1.165M in scalable costs (insurance, import duty).
That's ~$1.4M for a full 20ft shipping container. At 643,015 ozt, that's ~$2.18/ozt.
So the EFP spread (COMEX futures - LBMA spot) would need to exceed negative $2.20 or so for any hope of realizing an arbitrage profit.
In my personal data set (in a spreadsheet) , I started tracking the COMEX-LBMA silver EFP spreads daily back in late February 2026. COMEX silver vault stock was a total bloodbath of withdrawals in March and USA exported ~500 metric tons of silver to the UK. The EFP spread in March generally stuck to a range of -$0.30 to -$0.50 (with a few outliers on boths sides of the range, but mostly outside on the low end).
If Grok is correct, the bullion banks were just bleeding cash earlier this year while sending silver to London to keep the LBMA from running dry of liquid free float (again).
Per Grok:
a 20ft shipping container holds around 643,015 troy ounces (~20 metric tons)@ $60/ozt this is ~$38.6MShipping that container by ocean freight to the UK costs ~$235K in fixed costs (freight, inland transport, handling, misc) and ~$1.165M in scalable costs (insurance, import duty).That's ~$1.4M for a full 20ft shipping container. At 643,015 ozt, that's ~$2.18/ozt.
So the EFP spread (COMEX futures - LBMA spot) would need to exceed negative $2.20 or so for any hope of realizing an arbitrage profit.
In my personal data set (in a spreadsheet) , I started tracking the COMEX-LBMA silver EFP spreads daily back in late February 2026. COMEX silver vault stock was a total bloodbath of withdrawals in March and USA exported ~500 metric tons of silver to the UK. The EFP spread in March generally stuck to a range of -$0.30 to -$0.50 (with a few outliers on boths sides of the range, but mostly outside on the low end).
If Grok is correct, the bullion banks were just bleeding cash earlier this year while sending silver to London to keep the LBMA from running dry of liquid free float (again).