Amendment to holiday pricing for minor metals, ores, alloys, industrial minerals from 2023

Prices (of any frequency) which are solely assessed by our team in China will not be assessed or published at all on Chinese public holidays.

Daily and twice-weekly prices assessed in any location will also not be assessed or published on relevant public holidays.

In Europe and the United States, less frequent price assessments (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly) will be made on the closest working day in the same month of the scheduled price assessment (see tables below for exact dates). If there are two such potential days, the price will be assessed on the day before the public holiday.

All prices which follow the calendars for England and Wales, and the US, will be published as normal during all working days, including those between Christmas and New Year. This will be a change from earlier practice, when they would have been rolled over.

The consultation period for this proposed amendment started on Wednesday February 23 and ran until Wednesday March 23. The 2023 holiday calendar is now confirmed and will be published in the near future.

The published 2022 calendar will not be affected by these changes. Price indices (such as those for manganese ore, cobalt hydroxide and UG2 chrome ore) will also not be affected.

Please note that Fastmarkets has already separately concluded a consultation on changes to the pricing calendar for cobalt metal in-warehouse Rotterdam, which took effect on March 15, 2022. This notice does not affect cobalt pricing any further, but will bring other prices into line with the cobalt ones from 2023.

Further details on pricing
Fastmarkets’ price assessments for minor metals, ores, alloys and industrial minerals in 2023 will follow the holiday calendar of the country in which the price is based or in which the team assessing the price is based (England, US, China).

This means that prices assessed by the London or other-Europe-based team members, for instance, will follow public holidays in England and Wales. Prices assessed in Shanghai will follow Chinese public holidays, and so on.

Prices for lithium cif China Japan Korea, all spodumene prices, cobalt hydroxide payables, imported charge chrome cif China, and Turkish chrome ore cfr China, are assessed jointly in London and China, and will follow the England and Wales holiday schedule shown below. They will be assessed as normal on holidays in China. Price assessments for high-carbon ferro-chrome, cif Japan and South Korea, will follow the China schedule.

Please note that this notice does not include ferro-nickel. Ferro-nickel, as a London Metal Exchange-related discount/premium, follows the base metals calendar. Nickel sulfate also follows the base metals calendar.

Below are the public holidays in the regions affected.

England and Wales*
*Indices follow a different schedule

China*

United States

*Indices
Minor metals, ores and alloys indices (which include the weekly cobalt hydroxide index, cif and fob manganese ore, chrome ore (UG2, cif China) and the ferro-chrome indicator) are not published on England and Wales bank holidays. They are unaffected by holidays in other regions.

Where England and Wales public holidays occur on an index day, the manganese ore and chrome ore (UG2) indices will be published on the following working day, while the cobalt hydroxide index will be published on the preceding working day.

From 2023, manganese ore fot indices will follow the China holiday schedule, and will be published on the following working day after a holiday in China.

Feedback
To provide feedback on these prices and indices, or if you would like to provide price information by becoming a data submitter, please contact Dalila Ouerghi by email at: pricing@fastmarkets.com. Please add the subject heading ‘FAO: Dalila Ouerghi, re: minor metals etc pricing holidays.’

To see all Fastmarkets’ pricing methodology and specification documents go to https://www.fastmarkets.com/about-us/methodology.