S&P Global Platts launches Lithium Carbonate CIF North Asia price assessment

Brings new price transparency to lithium market

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May 23, 2018, 04:42 ET

SINGAPORE, May 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- S&P Global Platts, the leading independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets, announced that it started producing weekly Lithium Carbonate CIF North Asia assessment on 4 May 2018.

Lithium carbonate is the bellwether product for understanding Li-ion battery fundamentals. The new lithium carbonate price assessment is focused on battery grade lithium carbonate deliveries to North Asian ports in China, Japan and South Korea, but also considers deliveries to other countries, normalizing where applicable.

Ciaran Roe, global head of metals pricing, S&P Global Platts said: "The advent of the electric vehicle (EV) has been accompanied by increased demand for metals needed to produce batteries. The launch of this new price assessment is in recognition of a consistently growing market demand for increased pricing information for battery grade lithium carbonate. Our robust price assessment methodology draws on over 100 years' experience in the commodities markets and our strong metals market network as well as our worldwide network of offices and multi-lingual work force to offer increased transparency and essential intelligence to this market."

The weekly price assessment reflects lithium carbonate with battery grade quality and will be timestamped at 4.30pm Singapore time each Friday. The specifications reflected are a minimum lithium content of 99.5%. Cargo size reflected is between 5-40 metric tonnes per shipment with different cargo sizes considered but may be normalized. All origins of lithium carbonate meeting this specification will be taken into consideration in the assessment. Unit & currency of measurement will be USD per metric ton with a lead time of 15-60 days from publication.

Platts metals price assessments are built on the Platts Market-on-Close (MOC) methodology, highly-transparent price assessment process based on the principle that price is a function of time. The MOC process in metals identifies bids, offers, tradable values and confirmed trades by collecting a wide variety of transactional and market information through a survey of industry participants, which typically includes communicating with sources via phone, email, and instant messaging More information on Platts metals methodology can be found here.

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SOURCE S&P Global Platts