Zirconium: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Zircon is mined from mineral sands with titanium minerals, mainly in Australia and South Africa. Most is used in ceramic tiles, foundries and refractories, and a small purified share becomes zirconium metal for nuclear fuel cladding.
No public price Zirconium has no public monthly price series: Zircon sells on private quarterly contracts; no free public series.What its price moves with
Mineral sand mines produce zircon alongside the ilmenite and rutile used for titanium dioxide pigment, so pigment demand and zircon demand together decide whether new mines open and how fast existing ones run.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Zirconium and hafnium are chemically almost identical and must be separated for nuclear use, which yields hafnium as a by-product. Hafnium supply therefore depends on demand for reactor-grade zirconium metal.
No public price for hafnium, so the link is explained in words only.Zirconium alloy tubes clad uranium fuel in most reactors because they barely absorb neutrons. Nuclear build-outs raise demand for this high-value metal, though it is small in tonnage next to ceramics.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Titanium metal feedstocks come from the same mineral sand deposits as zircon, and the two metals are made by similar chloride and Kroll processes, sometimes by the same companies in the US, China and Japan.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Zircon opacifies glazes on ceramic tiles and sanitary ware, used alongside clays and feldspar, so tile output in China, India, Spain and Italy is its largest demand driver. Construction slowdowns cut zircon demand.
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.