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.

Europe’s hopes of an independent battery supply chain are in jeopardy, some market participants said, after a recent spate of company announcements that were widely regarded as bearish for the burgeoning sector.

Liberty Steel will idle operations at its Peoria, Illinois, facility starting Monday December 9 through “at least” February 3 “due to a shortage of wire rod and financial difficulties,” an industry observer familiar with the company’s operations said on Monday December 2.

With the race to decarbonize the steel sector gathering pace around the world, Fastmarkets reached out to subject experts in Europe, to discuss the major challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in the new, green steel landscape.

The price of lithium is falling, but some Western companies have recently announced more investments in the Lithium Triangle – a region of South America comprising parts of Argentina, Chile and Bolivia.

The Lithium Triangle, a region of South America comprising Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, has proven potential in lithium production, but each country faces its own specific challenges.

The countries that comprise the Lithium Triangle currently control more than 50% of global lithium resources, with production concentrated in the salt flats regions of Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, where there are lithium brine deposits.

Read more about the highlights from Fastmarkets’ annual Middle East Iron and Steel conference, which was held on 18-20 November in Dubai.

A renewable fuel production facility for hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is set to be established at the Port of Riga, Latvia, making it the first of its kind in the Baltics, the port announced on Tuesday November 26.

Steel market participants had varying reactions to US President-elect Donald Trump’s assertion on Monday September 25 that he will impose a 25% tariff of all products being imported from Canada and Mexico into the US, as well as levy a 10% additional tariff on all Chinese imports.

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