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.

African material will remain part of the tantalum supply chain regardless of the lithium market, according to Ian Margerison, executive marketing manager at the Tantalum-Niobium International Study Center (TIC).

As the US heads to the polls to vote for its next presidential candidate in what many have characterized as one of the closest races in electoral history, the energy sector hangs in the balance.

Asian steel hot-rolled coil prices have had difficulty rising in recent weeks due to a number of major themes in the market, sources told Fastmarkets.

Sluggish demand for China’s graphite flake fines in both the batteries’ anode and refractories sectors has led to ongoing output cuts among flake miners and processors, which has further tightened the supply of large flake graphite in China, sources told Fastmarkets.

The growth in Chinese shipments of batteries for energy storage systems (ESS) is far outstripping the growth in deliveries of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), sources told Fastmarkets in the week to Friday November 1.

Jinnan Iron & Steel Group is the latest company to join the push to expand China’s steelmaking footprint in the Middle East and is working with Brazil’s Vale to establish an iron ore concentration plant at the Sohar Port and Freezone in Oman, Fastmarkets understands.

China and India are ramping up electrical steel production through new joint ventures and acquisitions to meet rising global demand and sustainability goals.

A new Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) called China Resources Recycling Group (CRRG) has been established to build a national platform for recycling and reusing resources, according to an announcement from Chinese officials on October 18. While details of the company’s specific plans remain scarce, market participants remain concerned about weak market fundamentals, sources told Fastmarkets..

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has confirmed that fuel duty will not rise in 2025, keeping the previous 5 pence-per-liter discount in place.

Download this checklist help you create effective procurement strategies.

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Why use a price reporting agency?

Navigate uncertainty and make business decisions with confidence using our battery raw materials 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