Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE), a leading global provider of technology and data, today announced the launch of its first futures contracts based on battery materials, expanding its energy and environmental markets – which represent the most liquid markets to trade these products - into critical minerals.
ICE has launched four cash-settled battery materials contracts covering lithium hydroxide, lithium carbonate, cobalt and spodumene futures based on Fastmarkets’ price assessments.
“Our customers are managing their way through heightened geopolitical risk, the evolving trade flow environment around critical minerals as well as the wider energy market,” said Jeff Barbuto, Global Head of Oil Markets at ICE. “These contracts are important new additions to our energy derivatives offering and we’re looking forward to working with the battery materials industry to find ways to add value to this space and build liquidity alongside our broader energy trading and clearing platform.”
“The battery raw materials industry relies on Fastmarkets’ trusted benchmarks as enablers for trade and investment,” said Przemek Koralewski, Global Head of Market Development at Fastmarkets. “Partnering with ICE further supports this growing market with the risk management tools it needs.”
The new battery materials contracts join ICE’s network of over 800 crude and refined oil products all underpinned by Brent, the price barometer for three quarters of the world’s internationally traded crude oil, and ICE Low Sulphur Gasoil the global benchmark for refined oil products at the center of middle distillates trading. Gasoil futures and options reached record open interest (OI) of 1.43 million contracts on May 29, 2025, up 29% year-over (y/y). Gasoil Options hit a single day volume record of 22,650 contracts on May 20, 2025, surpassing the previous record set in May 2016.
ICE’s global oil benchmarks hit successive OI records during May 2025 with ICE Brent futures reaching a record 2.9 million in OI and ICE WTI (Cushing) futures and options reaching 1.7 million on May 8, 2025, with ICE Murban futures hitting record OI of 85,365 on May 29, 2025. OI across ICE’s total futures and options contracts reached a record high of 104.6 million contracts on May 23, 2025, up 8% y/y, including a record 41.8 million commodities futures and a record 40 million energy futures.
