My name is Scott Yarham. I'm the Prices Lead here at CRU. I look after prices across the bulk ferroalloys, chrome, noble alloys and minor metals, nickel, and metallics.
What does the CRU ferroalloys team focus on?
Bulk ferroalloys are part of the steel making process. It's an essential part and a massive market, with lots of moving parts at any given time. Consumers, producers and traders are situated globally, so our reach has to cover that.
I run a team of pricing assessors across the US, China and Europe. We're in contact with the market on a daily basis, making sure we keep our ear to the ground, so if any developments happen, we're the first to report them.
The thing with CRU is we're not just a pricing platform, and we're not just a pricing publication. We have many parts to the business that are essential to getting a holistic approach and insight.
What trends are you seeing in ferroalloys?
Ferroalloys have had a fascinating 12 months. We've seen the traditional elements and fundamentals of supply and demand, which have had a major effect on price levels. We've also had non traditional actors come into the market: raw materials, ores; traders in Asia, which had not been seen before. These new actors have had a major effect on price levels going up, but also on them crashing down.
We saw manganese ore prices hit an absolute zenith in five months and crash back down earlier this year. They've now managed to get back up in the last two months. It's all very unseasonal and very untraditional.
We have a consulting arm, we have a research arm, and we have very strong analytics. What this does is give a much greater richness to what we put out to our customers.
We obviously adapt to what the needs of the markets are and how we produce our prices. For instance, on the bulk ferroalloys we are transaction-based only. We believe that is the strongest approach. We are the only publication that takes this approach.
The reason we do this is to avoid undue volatility, possible manipulation, but also to be as reflective as possible of the real market in a consistent manner that's not based on opinion or, perhaps, fiction.