Fatty alcohols: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Most fatty alcohols are made by hydrogenating esters from palm kernel and coconut oil, so lauric oil prices dominate; the rest come from ethylene. Demand comes from detergents and personal care, with prices agreed in Asian and European contracts.
Proxy Palm kernel oil price US$/t · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for fatty alcohols itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkFatty alcohols and Coconut oil
Monthly changes 0.79 strong correlation 12-month changes 0.93 strong correlation Last 5 years 0.71 monthly changes Lead or lag none No clear lead or lag Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Fatty alcohols ≈ 1.00 × (Coconut oil)0.99 R² 0.91 On this fit, a 10% higher coconut oil price goes with a 9.9% higher fatty alcohols price over the long run. Units: US$/t and $/mt.Chart: Fatty alcohols and Coconut oil prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Fatty alcohols price against Coconut oil price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Coconut and palm kernel oil are the two lauric oils that supply the C12-C14 chains detergents need, and the proxy here is palm kernel oil itself. The two prices move almost as one: monthly changes correlate at 0.79 and yearly changes at 0.93.
strong co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsPalm kernel oil is pressed from the same fruit bunches as palm oil, so both depend on the same plantations, weather and Indonesian export rules. The proxy tracks palm oil closely, with monthly moves correlating at 0.71 and yearly moves at 0.88.
strong co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsPart of supply is synthetic, built from ethylene by the Ziegler or oxo routes, so a wide gap between lauric oil and ethylene shifts buyers between them. The link is loose in the data: monthly moves correlate at 0.22 and yearly moves at 0.57.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsBiodiesel and fatty alcohol plants both turn vegetable oils into methyl esters, so biofuel mandates compete for the same oil. The biodiesel proxy is soybean oil, and it moves with the palm kernel proxy: monthly changes correlate at 0.48 and yearly changes at 0.73.
moderate co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsFatty alcohols are turned into ethoxylates and sulphates, the oil-loving part of shampoos and detergents. The data barely shows it, with monthly moves at -0.13, because the US surfactant index reflects slow-moving branded and contract prices rather than Asian oil markets.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsHydrogenating methyl esters to alcohols needs large volumes of hydrogen, usually made on site from natural gas. It is a real but small cost, and the US index for hydrogen and argon shows almost no link, with monthly moves correlating at -0.05.
little or none co-movement month to month · 208 months Show chartsHow 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.