Earth-i announces launch of the SAVANT Global Copper Smelting Index

New Service from Earth-i and Marex Spectron to launch on 18 October, ahead of LME Week
08 October 2019  – Leading British Earth Observation and geospatial intelligence company Earth-i, in collaboration with Marex Spectron and the European Space Agency, has today announced the launch of a ground-breaking product in the commodity markets, the SAVANT Global Copper Smelting Index. This dataset provides key insights on the global copper supply chain by publishing up-to -date operational status reports on the world’s copper smelter plants.
Earth-i provides unique insights and analytics through Earth Observation. It utilises industry leading access to more than twenty high-resolution satellites and has developed advanced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning-led analytics to build on its satellite image processing expertise. Earth-i launched its own Earth Observation satellite in 2018, capable of collecting high definition colour videos from space.
Timely and accurate information on the supply of copper is of exceptional value to traders, analysts, fund managers and organisations involved with the supply chain. Whilst there are several incumbent sources of data on mines and smelters, the data is often incomplete, incompatible between world regions, lacks robustness or is simply unavailable in a timely fashion.
The SAVANT Global Copper Smelting Index opens up this part of the market, with ongoing coverage and monitoring of up to 90% of the smelting capacity for copper around the globe. Using daily updated sources, including extensive use of geospatial data collected from satellites, the index reports on the activities at the world’s smelting plants offering subscribers unprecedented levels of coverage, accuracy and reliability. This dataset allows users to make better informed and more timely trading decisions.
After a year of trials and user-testing with leading copper producers, commodity traders and industry analysts, the SAVANT index is now being launched to subscribers, with daily, weekly or monthly data options. This is the first product in a series of SAVANT metal indices, with further services to follow.
CEO of Earth-i, Richard Blain, said: “Working closely with Marex Spectron, we have carefully developed SAVANT over time with a lot of input from companies and experts actively involved in the copper supply chain, to ensure we deliver a product that’s truly a major innovation for them.” He added: “The hard work has paid off and the feedback from trialists and the results we are achieving when correlated against historical data have convinced us that the time is now right to make the product available to the industry as a subscription service. We are grateful to all the trialists who have helped to shape this innovative new service.”
With development partly funded by the UK Space Agency via the European Space Agency (ESA) through its business applications programme, SAVANT is a partnership between Earth-i and leading global commodities broker Marex Spectron.
Rita Rinaldo, Head of Institutional Business Applications Projects at ESA, commenting on the launch of SAVANT, said: “ESA is very active in its support for the rapid development and deployment of innovative new space-enabled applications that can quickly and effectively support better commercial outcomes. This depends on solving real-world problems through data from space and geospatial analytics. We are delighted to see Earth-i benefit from that and launch a truly world-beating product today.”
Emily Gravestock, Head of Applications Strategy at the UK Space Agency, said: “The UK is a global leader in bringing space applications to new and innovative sectors. We support exciting companies, such as Earth-i, to help us reach our ambitious goal of securing 10% of the global space market by 2030.”
“Timeliness of data is critical and this marks a significant improvement over existing sources, as well as an objective process,” said Guy Wolf, Global Head of Market Analytics at Marex Spectron. “SAVANT delivers unique insights, not just to copper producers, traders and investors, but also to analysts and economists who use metals performance as strong indicators of wider economic activity. We see huge potential from this type of market intelligence and will continue working with Earth-i to develop further products.
“Paying subscribers will have access to detailed information and insights down to individual smelter level with daily updates. In addition, Earth-i will publish a free monthly global index from 18 October with registration for this service now open.
For further information and to download the SAVANT brochure, please visit the website www.earthi.space/savant.