Flame retardants: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Flame retardants are brominated, phosphorus-based or mineral additives that slow fire in plastics, cables, foams and textiles. Prices follow bromine, phosphorus and aluminium hydroxide costs and fire-safety rules for electronics, construction and vehicles.
No public price Flame retardants has no public monthly price series: Many product grades on private contracts; no public price index.What its price moves with
Brominated flame retardants are the largest use of bromine, which comes mainly from Dead Sea brines, US wells and Chinese sources. Chinese bromine shortages have driven sharp price rises for these retardants in the past.
No public price for bromine, so the link is explained in words only.Antimony trioxide is used with brominated retardants to make them far more effective. China dominates antimony supply, and its export restrictions since 2024 lifted antimony prices sharply, raising costs for these systems.
No public price for antimony, so the link is explained in words only.Halogen-free phosphorus retardants, increasingly used in electronics and EV parts, are made from yellow phosphorus produced from phosphate rock. Phosphorus is energy intensive to make, so Chinese power curbs can tighten supply.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Aluminium hydroxide, an intermediate from alumina refining, is the largest-volume flame retardant, used in cables and panels. It is tied to the bauxite and alumina chain rather than the aluminium metal price, so the link is indirect.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.ABS and other engineering plastics in electronics housings need flame retardants to meet fire standards. Demand from consumer electronics, appliances and electrical fittings therefore drives volumes of brominated and phosphorus retardants, and tighter fire codes add to it.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Power and data cables, especially in buildings and data centres, use halogen-free flame-retardant compounds filled with aluminium hydroxide. Grid upgrades, renewable connections and data-centre cabling therefore raise flame retardant demand, especially for mineral fillers in low-smoke cables.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.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.