Automotive

Your guide to commodity market trends, pricing dynamics and the automotive raw materials supply chain

Helping automakers to overcome the business risks associated with volatile raw materials markets
Fastmarkets’ automotive suite brings together the vital commercial insights, data and analytics that you need to help you make accurate forecasts, manage inventories and price risk, benchmark costs against your peers’ costs and refine your strategic plans.

Our automotive customers get access to in-depth price data and short- and long-term forecasting and analysis for the following raw materials

  • Agriculture: Biofuels, hides and leather
  • Forest products: Paper packaging, pallets
  • Metals and mining: Base metals, battery raw materials, rare earths, steel, scrap

Our battery raw materials analytics include a Battery Recycling Outlook and Battery Cost Index. We continue to expand our coverage as the global automotive market evolves. 

Learn more about the products and services that make up Fastmarkets’ automotive suite:

Breaking news and market-reflective commodity prices, even when markets are at their most volatile.

Commodities covered: Steel, scrap, base and minor metals, ores and alloys, industrial minerals, pallets, rare earths, packaging, biofuels, hides and leather

Analysis of the forces moving your markets and how they’ll play out over the next 1-2 years.

Commodities covered: Steel, scrap, base and minor metals, ores and alloys, industrial minerals, rare earths, packaging

5- and 15-year forecasts underpinned by deep industry expertise, macroeconomic analysis and 50 years of historical data.

Commodities covered: Battery raw materials

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How Fastmarkets helps automakers
Fastmarkets’ automotive suite is designed to address common challenges faced by automakers in the procurement and management of raw materials.

Volatile prices

Price volatility is nothing new for procurement professionals familiar with the vagaries of global commodity markets. And yet, recent price volatility is straining material management processes and supplier relationships.

Fastmarkets helps automakers anticipate and hedge against price risk and put in place more robust pricing practices.   

Opaque markets

Market complexity, dependence on imports from distant shores, supply insecurity, accessing new subsidies driven by the Inflation Reduction Act and the EU Battery Directive, unanticipated changes in regulation, recycling mandates and imperatives — it’s a lot to juggle.

Fastmarkets gives automakers access to a network of expert price reporters and analysts, deeply immersed in their markets. Our news and analysis services bring their insights to you in real time.

Supply chain uncertainty

Every link of the automotive supply chain has been tested to its limits in recent years. When the business turns to the planning and strategy team to predict the market’s next move, that team turns to Fastmarkets.

Fastmarkets equips automakers with up-to-date market analysis, coverage of the latest news and trends moving the market and access to experts. Our in-depth analysis of the EV value chain includes cost differentials as well as prices, forecasts and subsidy impacts for the US, Europe, China and the rest of Asia. 

Automakers’ top prices
Our benchmark prices in battery-grade lithium, steel scrap and low-carbon aluminium are some of the most popular with our subscribers from the automotive sector. We assess the automotive prices you see below and hundreds more prices on a daily or weekly basis depending on their liquidity. We also provide short-term price forecasts for many critical materials, including lithium and cobalt. We’ve recently launched black mass, MHP and rare earths prices and added them to our automotive suite.

Looking for a specific price? Search our database for one of our 5,500+ prices

Why Fastmarkets

Automakers have long relied on Fastmarkets’ price data, news and analysis to inform their procurement strategies and manage risk for traditional automotive raw materials such as leather, steel and aluminium. Automakers now also partner with Fastmarkets to inform their electrification and sustainability strategies, leveraging our expertise in battery raw materials and rare earths, green metals and more. 

  • Fastmarkets has more than 100 years’ experience in analyzing and pricing commodity markets.
  • We hold benchmark prices in lithium, iron ore, aluminium and many other key materials.
  • We’ve got more than 600 team members worldwide, with price reporters on the ground in key markets, as well as analysts and editorial teams who are researching and reporting on shifting market dynamics. 

Download the product brochure to learn more. 

Latest automotive raw materials news

Our team of commodity market experts and price reporters provide weekly prices and market analysis for the automotive industry.

Copper smelters struggling with record low treatment and refining charges (TCs/RCs) won’t be able to look to the Cobre Panama mine to ease market tightness any time soon.

Read Fastmarkets’ monthly battery raw materials market update for February 2025, focusing on raw materials including lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and more

US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose 25% tariffs on imports of steel products into the US has generated a strong reaction in the EU, with market sources expecting a domino effect and a subsequent trade war, Fastmarkets heard on Tuesday February 11.

This guide explores current price trends, breaks down the key copper scrap grades and provides a global outlook for 2025.

Here are the key takeaways from market participants on US ferrous scrap metal prices, market confidence, inventory and more from our January survey.

The photovoltaic (PV) solar power industry is continuing to evolve, but demand for gallium as a doping element in silicon-based PV cells is gradually declining, market participants told Fastmarkets early in 2025.

There’s broad agreement that DeepSeek has upended the artificial intelligence (AI) sector by developing a cutting-edge large language model that uses less computational power, but whether improved AI efficiency cuts demand for copper in the data centers used to power it is a matter of debate.

The lithium market in 2025 is expected to face significant challenges due to production cuts, shifting demand patterns, and geopolitical tensions. These factors are poised to reshape the market landscape, impacting supply chains and pricing strategies.

The impact of the US’ breakneck flip-flop on immediate 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods this week is adding confusion to a North American steel market long-starved of certainty, sources told Fastmarkets.

Download this checklist help you create effective procurement strategies.

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Whether you’re interested in learning how to become a customer from our sales teams or looking to get in touch with one of our reporters, we’re here for you.

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Why use a price reporting agency?

Navigate uncertainty and make business decisions with confidence using our price data, forecasts and critical intelligence.

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Fastmarkets combines the commodity intelligence of these familiar names:

Metal Bulletin • American Metal Market • Scrap Price Bulletin • Industrial Minerals • RISI • FOEX • The Jacobsen • Agricensus • Palm Oil Analytics • Random Lengths • FastMarkets and more