Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (Benchmark) is the world’s leading IOSCO-regulated price reporting agency (PRA), proprietary data provider, and market intelligence publisher for the lithium ion battery to electric vehicle (EV) supply chain.
Our granular and expert focus on the entire supply chain makes us unique: from lithium and cobalt mining through to the manufacturing of cathode and anode functional materials, to battery cell and EV production.
At Benchmark, we set the lithium industry’s reference and benchmark pricing. Our series of price assessment and data methodologies allow us to collect our proprietary data from the source, creating data that is relied upon by the industry to make multi-billion dollar investment decisions that accelerates the energy storage revolution.
Benchmark’s tireless and methodical data collection coupled with in-house expert analysis makes us entirely unique in the 21st century publishing space and the world’s most trusted service.
As a result, our services are relied upon by major actors in the EV supply chain, we have testified to the US Senate multiple times, advised The White House, The Pentagon, and government agencies around the world.
We have taken a global approach to building our business, one that reflects the niche but global industry that we are representing. Benchmark is Headquartered in London, UK, but has offices and team members strategically located around the world including: San Francisco (USA), Santiago (Chile), Tokyo (Japan), Fort Lauderdale (USA), Zug (Switzerland), and Jakarta (Indonesia).
As the need arose to create trusted reference and benchmark pricing for the lithium industry, Benchmark chose a granular approach with our price assessment methodologies as possible for the industry we serve.
This means for each speciality chemical or commodity we cover, we have developed a specific price assessment methodology including our IOSCO-regulated Lithium Price Assessment Methodology here.
Other price and data assessments we undertake include: Cobalt, Graphite, Nickel, Cathode, Anode, Battery Cells (Megafactories).
Benchmark‘s data-driven, granular approach is a major advancement for an industry that was used to older journalistic approaches, previously relying on commodity news services.
Benchmark‘s Price Assessments, Forecasting and Advisory services are relied upon by a wide range of customers from mining majors, speciality chemical producers, cathode and anode makers, battery cell manufacturers, EV / automotive OEMs, and energy and utility groups.
A more recent trend has seen major industrial groups and oil and gas majors seek data and advisory services from us as the industry grows.
The financial market has always been a major group of customers for us including brokers, bank research divisions, and buy-side groups including hedge funds and private equity funds.
Since our inception, Benchmark has put the industry community at the heart of everything we do.
In our relentless pursuit for transparency and accountability into how we operate as a business, each year we host a series of half and one-day seminars for our customers called The Benchmark World Tour which has been running since 2015, our first full year of operation. These seminars offer a face-to-face opportunity for our customers to question our data and analysis or add their own opinion to a rapidly changing industry.
We also host Benchmark Minerals Week – a full week of deal-making and networking for the industry – which combines our Graphite + Anodes and our Cathodes conferences. This is held in Los Angeles each November.
As part of our commitment to connecting industry with government, we host the Benchmark Summit in May each year in Washington DC. This brings together major industry players with the USA’s most influential policy makers including Congress and Senators and sets the lithium ion battery to EV supply chain agenda for the US.
Our Europe-based industry conference is called Battery Megafactories Europe and focuses on solving the challenges of building super-sized battery cell plants on the continent and localising supply chains. It takes place in June each year.
In addition to our community engagement with conferences and seminars, it is unique policy at Benchmark to travel the world, see the mines and plants we are analysing, and to meet our customers face to face and truly understand their needs.
As a result of this continuous consultation with the active industry, we evolve our price assessment and data methodologies to meet the needs of our customers and align to the IOSCO-principals that are core to our business.
Graphite, lithium, cobalt and nickel are the critical raw materials used in today’s lithium ion battery technologies. They are the bedrock to the production of cathode and anode functional materials which are core components to the manufacturing of lithium ion battery cells.
As we enter the 2020s, the importance of the lithium ion battery as the enabling technology for the energy storage revolution – both via electric vehicles and off grid storage – is becoming globally recognised.
These supply chains are the oil pipelines of tomorrow and need for trusted data and expert analysis has become a crucial component in building the industry.
Since 2014, years before the surge of lithium ion interest, Benchmark has specialised in this and collected first-hand price and market data from the active players in these industries and analysing, from the ground up, constantly changing supply and demand dynamics.
We build our knowledge through creating and maintaining long lasting relationships and by visiting the mines and plants around the world.
Benchmark believes spending time on the ground at operations from China to Chile is central to our education and understanding.