How CPIP collects, validates, forecasts and publishes commodity price assessments.
Each price series represents a clearly defined instrument: product, grade, form, market, incoterm, currency and unit of measure. Prices are labelled as Actual, Assessed, Indicative or Forecast, so the basis of every number is clear and unambiguous.
Our assessments are supported by market-based research and direct industry inputs, including quotations and market indications gathered from suppliers, manufacturers, producers, traders and other relevant market participants. For FOB and CFR assessments, our team evaluates prevailing market quotations and relevant cost factors to ensure that published prices reflect current market conditions.
Before publication, every observation passes a structured validation pipeline: required-field checks, numeric and unit validation, duplicate detection, and anomaly screening against the previous period and historical distribution. Flagged records are reviewed by an analyst rather than silently rejected.
Our research team also continuously reviews market developments, government sources, trade regulations, tariffs and other relevant industry information to validate price movements and maintain current market context.
Prices move through a controlled workflow:
Draft → Validation → Analyst Review → Published
Changes to published records are versioned, and every modification is captured in the audit log with the editor, timestamp and reason. This provides a transparent and traceable process from data collection to publication.
Month-on-month (MoM), quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) and year-on-year (YoY) changes are computed centrally from the underlying observations. 52-week highs and lows use the trailing twelve months of available data.
Where applicable, relevant freight, tariff, duty and logistics factors are incorporated into market assessments based on current research and verified information.
Our forecasting process combines historical price data, market fundamentals and quantitative forecasting models to develop structured forward-looking price assessments. Our research and analytics team evaluates factors such as feedstock prices, supply, demand, plant operations, trade flows, freight, macroeconomic conditions and other relevant market drivers when developing forecasts.
Multiple forecasting techniques and model diagnostics may be evaluated before a forecast is published. Forecast outputs are reviewed by our analysts to ensure that the results are consistent with observed market fundamentals and available market intelligence.
Forecasts are versioned analyst estimates with confidence bounds, where applicable. Every published version is retained for forecast-vs-actual analysis, performance evaluation and backtesting, allowing our team to continuously improve the forecasting process.
For tariffs, duties and trade-related information, our research team monitors official government, customs and regulatory sources along with relevant market developments. We also work with specialized freight and logistics partners to obtain dedicated freight-rate intelligence, helping us incorporate relevant transportation costs into applicable CFR and delivered-price assessments.
This combination of primary market inputs, structured validation, quantitative modelling, official sources and specialized market intelligence forms the foundation of CPIP's commodity price assessments.
Note: this deployment ships with demonstration data for evaluation purposes.
