Metal Bulletin parent company expands commodity price reporting ops with purchase of lumber pricing business

Leading lumber and wood products price reporting agency (PRA) Random Lengths will become part of Euromoney’s commodity price reporting division, which includes the Metal Bulletin operations. Euromoney Institutional Investor plc agreed to buy the US-based company on Wednesday August 1.

Founded in 1944 and located in Eugene, Oregon, Random Lengths provides independent price assessments and market reporting for the global wood products industry. It has a core focus on the North American lumber and panels markets, publishing more than 1,500 prices each week.

Together with RISI, a PRA for the global forest product industry that was acquired by Euromoney in April 2017, it will form the primary global source for pricing data and intelligence for the markets it serves.

Euromoney’s commodity price reporting division is headed by Raju Daswani, who is also the Metal Bulletin chief executive officer.

The Metal Bulletin group aims to provide leading pricing intelligence, including independent industry benchmarks, for the metal and mining industry. The group’s global portfolio of news, analysis, conferences and insight services complement these price benchmarks.

“We are delighted to have added Random Lengths to our group. It complements our existing forest products business and will enhance our ability to serve these markets with the products it needs,” Daswani said.

“In recent years, we have invested considerably in Metal Bulletin’s pricing technology and systems so that we can provide the best channels of delivery for our data into our client workflows but also increasing the transparency of our prices,” he added. “The investment we have made will now be available to our new business, which in turn will help us improve the service for clients of Random Lengths.”

Combined with existing pricing activities, the addition of Random Lengths will enhance Euromoney’s position as a global and world-class cross-commodity PRA, with more than 380 employees and over 5,500 reference prices & benchmarks.

The acquisition of Random Lengths this week and RISI in April 2017 follows the acquisition in August 2016 of FastMarkets, a leading provider of real-time physical base metals and exchange pricing information, which significantly enhanced Metal Bulletin’s position in price reporting.