As we go into 2022 with inflation concerns, rise of a new COVID-19 variant, and continued supply disruptions and shortages, challenges will continue and most likely increase for buyers of commodities. To help with these challenges, here are recent activities and product/service launch announcements made by market intelligence providers covering the commodities space that are worthy to note.
MetalMiner – In December, MetalMiner announced they have “moved to newly incorporated Alpha Commodities, spinning out of parent company Azul Partners.” The MetalMiner Insights platform was built specifically to address the needs of metals buyers by providing real-time price feeds, forecasts, prescriptive sourcing recommendations and should-cost models. According to the press release, the platform provides both 30-day and longer-term price outlooks across a range of non-ferrous and ferrous metals and is available as an enterprise solution and also through a full API integration capability. MetalMiner, cofounded by Lisa Reisman and Stuart Burns, started out as a sister site of Spend Matters, a highly regarded procurement and technology and solutions intelligence provider.
Resilinc – Supply chain monitoring, mapping, and resiliency solution provider, Resilinc, announced their new CommodityWatchAI offering in December. The AI-powered offering continuously monitors over four million data sources and trends on key commodities, including gold, copper, aluminum, silicon, and paper, to name a few, and predicts near future price fluctuations by analyzing historical response data. CommodityWatchAI is described as “a first-of-its-kind product that provides customers with warnings on price fluctuations two to three months prior.” By leveraging AI, historical data, and machine learning the offering alerts users “about an event or trend that is impacting supply and demand for a specific commodity; predict[s] the risk level and price fluctuation; and propose[s] a purchasing action plan for commodity and sourcing teams.”
Arrowstream – In December, foodservice supply chain management software provider, Arrowstream, launched a commodity intelligence subscription service called CommodityONE. This service is intended to help purchasing departments, CPOs and CFOs establish predictive food prices and “build strategies to off-set inflation or take advantage of deflation.” Trends and forecasts are presented on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. From the press release you can access a link to read a sample report. For example, the Weekly CommodityOne Report for December 20, 2021, includes sections covering recent production and pricing/demand information for Beef, Pork, Chicken, Grains, Dairy, Energy and Currencies, Softs, Seafood, and Produce, along with a detailed Weekly Commodity Prices table and a Quarterly Pivot Model Chart.
S&P Global and IHS Markit – In a step closer toward completing their pending merger, S&P Global and IHS Markit announced agreements in late December to sell IHS Markit’s Base Chemicals business to News Corp and S&P Global’s CUSIP Global Services business to FactSet Research Systems. According to Daily Research News, pricing and forecast insights provider, Base Chemicals, is expected to reach $65m in revenue. If the sale gets completed, it will become part of Dow Jones’ Professional Information Business joining energy and renewables data and information provider, OPIS, which was acquired by News Corp from S&P Global and IHS Markit in August.
Mintec – Mintec, based in London, was started in 1982 and is an independent provider of global pricing information and analysis for commodities and raw materials. Mintec covers more than 15,000 food ingredients and non-food raw materials. In October, Mintec launched the Mintec Commodity Price Forecast Service for procurement, finance and risk management professionals. The new solution, fully integrated into the Mintec Analytics platform, follows the acquisition of price forecasting and hedging recommendations provider Kairos Commodities, which was announced in August. Coverage for the new service includes over 60 individual short and long term (up to 3 years) commodity price forecasts across soft commodities, grains, vegetable oils, dairy, meat, metals, packaging, energy, freight, and currencies. At the end of November 2021, two new forecasts – U.S. wheat and corn were launched.
LME and Metalshub – In October, The London Metal Exchange (LME) and Metalshub, a B2B marketplace platform, announced its collaboration to “establish a transparent, efficient and liquid spot trading platform and marketplace for base metals.” This initiative “will complement the LME’s existing offering, and will expand the physical product suite available on Metalshub – which currently focuses on the steel industry – to encompass LME core base metals, as well as other products suited to spot trading, including sustainably produced metals such as low carbon aluminium.” In November 2020, Metalshub started publishing price indices for a number of ferroalloys, which are based exclusively on real negotiation and transaction data.
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