Who It's For

Who typically uses Primary Commodity Prices?

Primary Commodity Prices is used across a broad range of professionals and organizations that need reliable, independent commodity price data for operational and strategic decisions.

The most common user profiles are:

• Procurement and supply chain professionals — Category managers, buyers, and sourcing analysts who benchmark contract prices against actual market transactions and plan inventory strategies.
• Sales and commercial teams — Sales managers, pricing analysts, and key account managers who use independent benchmarks to set and defend prices in customer negotiations.
• Corporate strategy and planning professionals — Strategy analysts and business development managers who track historical price trends and forecasts for long-term planning and market entry analysis.
• Cost and investment analysts — Financial analysts, cost engineers, and investment analysts who feed raw material prices into financial models, sensitivity analyses, and investment screening.
• R&D engineers and researchers — Process and innovation engineers who need commodity input prices to evaluate the economics of production routes in techno-economic assessments.
• Information service providers — Data platforms, consulting firms, and market intelligence companies that integrate our data into their own products and services under the Ultimate plan.

Organizations from chemicals, petrochemicals, metals, energy, engineering, financial services, and consulting sectors are among the most active users.

Is this product useful for procurement teams?

Procurement and supply chain professionals are among the primary users of Primary Commodity Prices. The product provides independent price benchmarks grounded in actual closed transactions — not limited to specific spot or contract indices — serving as an additional reference to validate contract formulas.

Key use cases for procurement teams include:

• Identifying when contract prices diverge structurally from market reality, supporting renegotiation decisions.
• Using multi-location price data to compare sourcing costs across regions.
• Leveraging short-term price forecasts to plan inventory buffers and hedging strategies.
• Using historical price trends to assess procurement performance over time.

Can sales teams use this data for pricing?

Sales and commercial professionals use Primary Commodity Prices to price and negotiate with confidence. The product provides independent benchmarks for setting and defending commercial prices with customers, multi-location price data enabling regional price comparisons to support differentiated pricing strategies, and historical price trends to justify price adjustments with credible, third-party data.

Typical roles include Sales Manager, Commercial Manager, Key Account Manager, Pricing Analyst, and Revenue Manager. A common scenario is using the benchmark data to demonstrate to a customer that a proposed price increase aligns with market-level movements — providing an objective reference point that is independent of either party's interests.

Is this product relevant for financial analysts?

Financial and investment analysts use Primary Commodity Prices for raw material pricing data in cost models and financial projections. Historical price data supports sensitivity analysis and scenario planning, while multi-location pricing enables market entry analysis across different regions.

The data is independently produced and based on official government trade statistics — making it suitable for due diligence, investment screening, and financial modeling contexts where unbiased third-party sources are required. Price history of up to 15 years (Ultimate plan) enables long-range trend analysis for capital-intensive investment decisions.

How do strategy teams use commodity price data?

Corporate strategy and planning professionals use Primary Commodity Prices across several dimensions of their work:

• Strategic planning — Historical price trends and forecasts inform long-term business planning and budgeting cycles.
• Market entry analysis — Multi-location pricing data helps evaluate the commercial attractiveness of different regions for expansion or sourcing.
• Financial modeling — Independent benchmarks serve as inputs for investment analysis and project evaluation.
• Cost evolution tracking — Multi-year historical data reveals how commodity costs have evolved, supporting trend-based strategic decisions and competitive positioning.

Price forecasts covering a rolling 6-month forward window, available on Pro, Advanced, and Ultimate plans, are particularly relevant for strategy teams that need a near-term market outlook to complement longer-horizon models.

Can engineers use this for process cost estimates?

R&D and process engineers use Primary Commodity Prices as a source of commodity input prices when performing techno-economic analyses (TEA) and process cost estimates. In a typical TEA workflow, raw material costs represent the largest component of operating expenses (OPEX), and reliable price data is essential to produce credible assessments.

Specific ways engineers apply the data include:

• Feeding current commodity prices into OPEX calculations for process simulations and feasibility studies.
• Using historical price trends to understand how input costs have evolved and to run sensitivity analyses across price scenarios.
• Accessing multi-location pricing to assess the regional viability of a production route — for example, comparing feedstock costs in the US versus Europe for an emerging process technology.

The product covers 220+ commodities across 7 industries including chemicals, polymers, metals, and fertilizers — the raw material categories most commonly used in industrial process engineering.

Can data providers integrate these prices?

Information service providers and data platforms can integrate Primary Commodity Prices into their own products and services through the Ultimate plan. This plan is specifically designed for companies that need to redistribute or embed commodity price data within a platform, application, or service offering.

Integration capabilities under the Ultimate plan include:

• REST Web API with up to 20 API users and 500+ requests per industry.
• Third-party sharing and integration rights — allowing the data to be surfaced within the subscriber's own commercial product.
• Consistent methodology across all commodities, ensuring data quality and reproducibility for redistribution.
• Multiple domain access and customizable terms and conditions for enterprise arrangements.

Is this suitable for companies new to commodity data?

Primary Commodity Prices is designed to be accessible to organizations at different levels of commodity data experience. Several features reduce the barrier for first-time users:

• Online Charts are available on all plans, providing a visual, interactive way to explore price data without requiring any technical setup or integration work.
• Currency and unit conversion lets users view prices in their preferred formats (EUR, JPY, kg, ton, etc.) directly in the interface — no manual calculation needed.
• Full samples and 1-year previews are freely available before any purchase, so teams can evaluate the data and interface with no commitment.
• Methodology documentation is publicly accessible, explaining in plain terms how data is gathered, processed, and published — which helps first-time users build confidence in the source.

The Starter plan ($299 per year per industry) provides a low-cost entry point with current prices and 1 year of price history, allowing teams to build familiarity with the data before deciding whether to upgrade to plans with broader historical depth, forecasts, or automation capabilities.