According to the CyclOpe index, the price of industrial and agricultural raw materials is expected to fall in 2024.
The prices of agricultural and industrial raw materials have been falling since 2023 according to the CyclOpe index. This benchmark index in monitoring raw materials markets had recorded a 14% drop in prices in 2023 compared to 2022. In the organization’s latest report, written by economist Philippe Chalmin, we can read that in 2024, “there are so many geopolitical, climatic and health uncertainties that the forecasting exercise remains very difficult on markets which react to all the tensions on the planet of which they are ultimately the best reveals.”
The report, however, announces that 2024 “will be the year of El Nino”, this climatic phenomenon which causes particularly high temperatures, particularly along the South Pacific. This phenomenon could therefore have an impact on the prices of agricultural raw materials. But good news, the forecasts are quite clear on a few factual elements: for the year 2024, CyclOpe forecasts a drop in world prices for corn (10%), rice (7%), sugar (10%), cotton (16%), wool (14%), palm oil (18%), soybeans (6%) and soybean oil (19%). The organization specifies, however, that the harvests of Brazil, which produces corn, soya, sugar, coffee and orange juice, represent an unknown which could impact the price of the products mentioned.
When it comes to minerals and metals, the index provides two very distinct forecast prices. The organization in fact anticipates a drop for minerals considered strategic for the energy transition and in particular for batteries based on nickel, lithium and cobalt. The latter two have in fact fallen by 54% and 46% respectively in 2023. While the price of copper could continue to rise until “returning to the threshold of 10,000 dollars per tonne during the course of the year”, as the report announces.
The analysis also states that copper is “set to become the most strategic of all raw materials in the years to come.” Same thing for coal, the price of which had already fallen significantly in 2023, a trend which should continue this year. Another expected increase: that of uranium, which has already been rising for several years and which is unlikely to stop with the worrying geopolitical situation in Niger and Kazakhstan as well as with the resumption of nuclear power.