Press Release
GCH to launch physical trading venue
London 22nd December 2022: Global Commodities Holdings (GCH) will launch a spot trading platform for physical delivery of nickel during the first quarter of 2023.
Member companies will trade Class I nickel products on GCH’s platform, on a CIF basis across a global span of locations. Actual transaction data, plus qualified bids and offers, will be used to calculate a spot index for Class I nickel, with the index-qualifying market opening during the Singapore morning and closing at 1800 UK time. All trading will be underpinned by GCH’s specially commissioned Standard Metal Trading Agreement and will be for standardised qualities and shapes of nickel.
GCH has a twenty-year history of spot physical trading and index calculation through its subsidiary globalCOAL, which owns and operates the gC NEWC thermal coal index that is used as the settlement price for the gC NEWC Futures contract traded and cleared by ICE Europe. The globalCOAL team also maintains the Standard Coal Trading Agreement (SCoTA), the most widely- used coal trading agreement, with more than 3,000 registered users worldwide in the thermal and metallurgical coal markets.
GCH is authorised and regulated in various of its activities by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, by the National Futures Association (NFA) in the US and operates in Singapore under permissions granted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). GCH also undertakes an annual audit to maintain its IOSCO compliant status and is an FCA approved Benchmark Administrator. The same experienced compliance and benchmark oversight teams that supervise the existing coal products will supervise the metal trading business.
Martin Abbott, CEO of GCH says: “There is a dislocation in the price discovery process for spot nickel, with the weight of futures transactions being too heavy for the existing settlement process. There is a very strong argument for separating spot price discovery from futures market activity, allowing both functions to thrive. GCH does not operate in the futures space, but does have valuable experience in providing a market-derived spot price that can be used in physical contracts and for the settlement of other products”. Continuing, on engagement with the industry: “We look forward to working with the nickel industry to discover credible and transparent nickel pricing and would welcome expressions of interest from the market to help steer the evolution of the contract through participation in our Product Advisory Groups”.
PRESS NOTES
Only member companies can trade on the GCH screen. Members must have sufficient counterparties reciprocated in the credit matrix before they are permitted to post bids and offers on screen.
GCH is a London based company with a branch office in Singapore.
Destinations that will qualify for inclusion in the index calculation will be: Baltimore, Jebel Ali, Amsterdam/Rotterdam/Antwerp, Singapore, Kaohsiung, Johor, Busan and Shanghai.
All forms of Class I nickel will be tradeable on the platform, but index inclusion will be restricted to briquettes, and full plate cathodes.
The index calculation of the daily settlement price will be derived exclusively from orders and trades on the physical trading screen, which comply with the methodology criteria.
The minimum transaction size on the platform will be 20 tonnes.
GCH trading venues sit on the Trayport trading platform infrastructure.
Media and market enquiries:
Alison Ellmann
Head of Business Development
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