How Metalshub Enables Verified Sustainable Metals Pricing with the London Metal Exchange

The London Metal Exchange (LME) has set out a structured plan to make sustainability a visible part of metals pricing. Its new roadmap introduces sustainable metal premia, a way to reflect verified environmental performance in the price of aluminium, copper, nickel, and zinc traded by LME-listed brands. Metalshub plays a central role in this process.

The platform provides the digital infrastructure through which verified sustainability data can be connected with real trading activity. Transactions executed on Metalshub between independent buyers and sellers form the factual basis for calculating these sustainability premia. This ensures that pricing is driven by transparent, auditable market data rather than estimates or surveys.

By linking verified data with executed trades, Metalshub helps the industry move towards a standardised, auditable way of valuing sustainable production.

For years, producers with low-carbon or responsibly sourced metals have lacked a transparent way to demonstrate and monetise their efforts. Prices were negotiated bilaterally, with no consistent reference point for what sustainability was worth in economic terms.

At the same time, procurement teams have faced increasing regulatory and stakeholder pressure from mechanisms such as the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and corporate Scope 3 reporting, to prove that their sourcing decisions align with decarbonisation targets.

The LME’s sustainable metals pricing initiative bridges these two needs, providing a market-wide mechanism to value verified sustainability performance. To achieve this, it required three components, brought together through the LME’s collaboration with Metalshub:

1. Standardisation
2. Transparency
3. Credible price discovery

In its Roadmap: Sustainable Metals Premia (October 2025), the LME outlines how sustainable price discovery will rely on three integrated elements:

1. Premium sustainability thresholds, defining maximum cradle-to-gate carbon footprints and third-party assurance standards for each metal (e.g., ASI for aluminium, Copper Mark, Nickel Mark, and Zinc Mark)
2. LMEpassport, the centralised digital register where producers disclose verified sustainability data, including carbon footprints and certification
3. Metalshub, the digital platform where eligible LME-listed brands meeting these thresholds can be traded, generating verifiable market transactions that feed into the pricing mechanism

To ensure independence and credibility, the LME has appointed Commodity Pricing and Analysis Limited (CPAL)—a new HKEX Group subsidiary in Dubai—as the pricing administrator. CPAL will publish regular sustainable premium prices based primarily on executed transactions recorded on Metalshub.

Adapted from: LME

Metalshub serves as the data and transaction engine of the LME’s sustainable metals pricing ecosystem. Every qualifying trade executed on the platform between independent counterparties contributes to the official premium calculation, ensuring that sustainability premia are derived from real market activity, not estimates or assumptions.

Key capabilities include:

• Verified transaction data: Metalshub validates that all trades originate from LME-listed brands with corresponding LMEpassport sustainability disclosures, linking each transaction to audited data.
• Structured pricing architecture: Transactions are executed as LME price plus premium, enabling the isolation of the sustainability premium as a measurable, reportable value.
• Comprehensive fallback inputs: When trading volumes are low, bids, offers, and other market assessments recorded on Metalshub provide additional verified data points for CPAL’s analysis.
• Auditability and traceability: Each data point is timestamped, logged, and independently reviewed under CPAL’s governance framework to meet the International Organisation of Securities Commissions’ (IOSCO) principles for financial benchmarks.

By embedding sustainability credentials directly into trade execution, Metalshub transforms ESG data from static documentation into a live pricing signal that reflects real-world market willingness to pay for sustainable production.

Adapted from: LME

The foundation for this model was built through the LME–Metalshub low-carbon nickel pilot, launched in 2024. Under this initiative, Class-1 nickel with a carbon footprint below 20 tonnes CO₂ per tonne (as defined by the Nickel Institute methodology) was traded on Metalshub with specific ESG disclosures. Buyers could evaluate suppliers based on verified carbon data and purchase nickel that met their sustainability criteria.

The pilot generated encouraging early results and provided the LME with empirical insights into how sustainable premia could be discovered through spot market transactions. It demonstrated that digital spot platforms like Metalshub can facilitate credible, liquidity-building price discovery for new sustainability-linked markets, an approach now being expanded to aluminium, copper, and zinc.

This collaboration delivers transparency for procurement and sales professionals and introduces a measurable link between sustainability performance and market value. Producers can now list low-carbon or responsibly sourced metals on Metalshub, ensuring their efforts are recognised in price terms and verifiable through the LME framework. Buyers can source directly from verified producers, confident that the sustainability data they rely on is independently audited and consistent with LMEpassport disclosures.

This digital integration bridges ESG reporting with commercial decision-making, enabling teams to:

• Demonstrate compliance with CBAM, CSRD, and other sustainability reporting frameworks
• Benchmark sustainability-linked premiums across suppliers and materials
• Strengthen sourcing strategies with transparent, comparable data
• Support corporate decarbonisation goals through quantifiable purchasing choices

By converting sustainability data into tradable information, Metalshub and the LME together are laying the groundwork for a more accountable and economically aligned metals market.

The LME’s roadmap marks a pivotal milestone in aligning price discovery with sustainability performance. As the industry moves towards verified and standardised ESG disclosures, Metalshub provides the technological infrastructure to make those disclosures actionable, connecting verified data, trusted standards, and real transactions in one environment. Through this integration, sustainable metals pricing becomes a tangible market outcome.

Learn how sustainability data can be traded and priced transparently via Metalshub.