Glycerine: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Glycerine is a by-product, so supply depends on how much biodiesel and fatty acid is made, not on glycerine demand. Prices swing widely as biofuel mandates change; refined grades sell to personal care, pharma and food buyers.
No public price Glycerine has no public monthly price series: Sold on private deals and trade reports; no free public price series.What its price moves with
Each tonne of biodiesel yields crude glycerine as a side stream, so biofuel mandates in Europe, Brazil, Indonesia and the US decide supply. When biodiesel output jumps, crude glycerine floods the market and its price can fall to fuel value.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Splitting fats with water produces fatty acids and glycerine together, and oleochemical plants are the main source of refined glycerine. Their output follows soap and surfactant demand, so glycerine supply moves with the fatty acid market rather than its own buyers.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Most glycerine starts as palm, soybean or other vegetable oil, so its supply follows the oil harvest and the biodiesel and oleochemical plants that process it. A cheap oil year usually means more crushing and more glycerine.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Glycerine can be turned into epichlorohydrin, the building block of epoxy resins, an alternative to the older propylene route. This use grows when glycerine is cheap, so it gives the by-product a floor price linked to resin demand.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Synthetic glycerine and epichlorohydrin can also be made from propylene. When propylene is expensive, glycerine-based routes win, and when glycerine is costly the propylene route returns, which ties the two prices loosely together.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.When crude glycerine is in glut it is burned in boilers or added to biogas digesters for its heat value. This sets a low floor under the price in years when biodiesel output is high and refining capacity is short.
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.