Sulphuric acid: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Sulphuric acid is made by burning sulphur from oil and gas refining, or captured from metal smelters. Most goes into phosphate fertiliser, and the rest into metal leaching and chemicals. It is costly to ship, so prices are regional.
Price index US PPI: sulfuric acid index (BLS base period) · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026What its price moves with
Selected linkSulphuric acid and Phosphoric acid
Monthly changes 0.18 little or none correlation 12-month changes 0.81 strong correlation Last 5 years 0.09 monthly changes Lead or lag +2 mo Phosphoric acid tends to lead by 2 months (r 0.26) Price function, Jan 2011 to Sep 2026 Sulphuric acid ≈ 2.35 × (Phosphoric acid)0.84 R² 0.72 On this fit, a 10% higher phosphoric acid price goes with a 8.3% higher sulphuric acid price over the long run. Units: index (BLS base period) and index (BLS base period).Chart: Sulphuric acid and Phosphoric acid prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2011, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2011, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Sulphuric acid price against Phosphoric acid price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2011), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Most acid plants burn elemental sulphur, recovered when refineries and gas plants clean their fuels, so sulphur sets the main raw material cost. Here both elements use the same sulphuric acid index, so no separate statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Phosphate rock is dissolved in sulphuric acid to make phosphoric acid, the largest single use of the acid. The two indices move slowly together: monthly moves correlate at only 0.18, but yearly moves at 0.81, as fertiliser cycles feed through.
little or none co-movement month to month · 189 months Show chartsDAP and MAP fertilisers are made from phosphoric acid, so fertiliser prices show demand for sulphuric acid. Monthly moves correlate at 0.26 and yearly moves at 0.66, as farm demand drives both.
weak co-movement month to month · 225 months Show chartsCopper smelters capture sulphur from ore as sulphuric acid, and copper mines use acid to leach ore. More smelting adds acid supply, so the link is mixed: monthly moves correlate at 0.12 and yearly moves at 0.21.
little or none co-movement month to month · 225 months Show chartsRefineries remove sulphur from fuels and sell it, so refinery output sets sulphur supply. The refining index correlates with the acid index at 0.28 for monthly moves and 0.57 for yearly moves, also a shared energy cycle.
weak co-movement month to month · 225 months Show chartsHydrofluoric acid is made by reacting fluorspar with sulphuric acid. The proxy is a broad US inorganic acids index, which moves almost in step with the sulphuric acid index: monthly moves correlate at 0.84 and in the last five years at 0.97, likely partly from overlapping index coverage.
strong co-movement month to month · 190 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.