Skip to the site navigation Skip to the main content

Aluminium premiums

Our price reporters track and assess a wide range of premiums for aluminium in locations across Asia, Europe and the Americas, providing the industry with tools to hedge premium price risk. 

Our aluminium premiums are industry and financial benchmarks. The London Metal Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have a number of premiums contracts settled against Fastmarkets’ aluminium premiums.  

In September 2015, the CME launched a Rotterdam duty-unpaid futures contract settled against Fastmarkets’ daily duty-unpaid Rotterdam price. The CME’s aluminium premium duty-paid futures contract, underpinned by Fastmarkets’ Rotterdam duty-paid premium, started trading on the CME in March 2016.

On March 11 2019, the LME launched a new cash-settled aluminium duty-unpaid European contract,  settled against Fastmarkets’ benchmark Rotterdam premium. The introduction of the regional aluminium premiums on the LME provides the market with the ability to manage their price exposure on a single trading venue, since the LME also holds the global benchmark for the underlying aluminium price. 

Latest insight

Market-reflective prices

We publish a range of prices for the aluminium industry, including aluminium premiums. Many of our prices are including established benchmarks that are trusted and used across the supply chain.  
 
Explore the full range of aluminium premiums and prices here. 

 

Being clear about our price assessment and index process is important. You can be confident that our pricing process is impartial, market reflective and market aligned. Our methodology is aligned with core IOSCO principles and we have successfully completed an assurance review (from PricewaterhouseCoopers) for our financial benchmarks.

View our aluminium premium methodology and specification documents here.

Our pricing process

Price assessment workflow infographic

Our solutions

Aluminium events

What are aluminium premiums?

Aluminium premiums represent the cost of buying metal on the physical market on top of the London Metal Exchange cash contract.  

The volatility of aluminium premiums has been by far the biggest and most important development in the aluminium market since the global financial crisis. The call for more hedging tools to mitigate risk started in 2014 when market participants argued that European aluminium premiums encompassed too large of a portion of the all-in aluminium cash exchange price.  

Numerous factors can affect premium levels including supply and demand issues, LME spreads, warehouse queues, raw material costs and financing.