Pharmaceutical excipients: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Pharmaceutical excipients are the inactive ingredients in medicines, such as microcrystalline cellulose, starch, lactose, glycerine and binders. Most are made from plant or dairy raw materials, so crop, pulp and milk prices, plus purity standards, set costs.
No public price Pharmaceutical excipients has no public monthly price series: Sold on contracts to formulators; no public price index.What its price moves with
Microcrystalline cellulose and other cellulose excipients come from wood pulp. Pulp costs follow forestry markets, though the US lumber series tracks housing demand more than pulp, so it is only a rough guide.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Maize starch and its modified forms are used as tablet fillers and disintegrants. Maize harvests and prices therefore affect the cost of these widely used excipients, though pharma grades carry a premium.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Lactose, a by-product of whey from cheese making, is one of the most common tablet fillers. Milk and whey supply, linked to cheese output in Europe, the US and New Zealand, sets lactose availability and price.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Pregelatinised starch, maltodextrin and other starch derivatives are used as excipients as well as in foods. Pharma grades carry a premium, but their prices still follow the same maize, tapioca and potato starch chain.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Excipients are blended with APIs to make finished doses, so generic drug output drives their demand. They are a small part of drug costs, but supply problems can halt tablet production.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Glycerine is used in syrups, softgels and creams and is largely a by-product of biodiesel and oleochemical plants. Biodiesel output therefore affects the supply and price of pharma glycerine, which tends to be cheap when biodiesel booms.
No public price for glycerine, so the link is explained in words only.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.