Global commodity market shockwaves set to hit local shores in 2026
World Bank Group outlook sees price hikes across agriculture, energy, minerals, and precious metals sectors
Better get your commodities credit card fully loaded and ready to go. Prospects for widespread sticker shock at the check-out counter are multiplying.
And not just for energy-related commodities.
The World Bank Group’s (WBG) latest Commodity Markets Outlook (CMO) forecasts that average commodity prices this year will be up 16% compared with 2025. That, according to the CMO, would be the first annual increase since 2022.
And that assumes the most acute phase of commodity trade disruptions ends this month, which would, in theory, clear the way for normalized shipping volumes through the Strait of Hormuz by October.
Under that scenario, the CMO report says commodity prices would be 25% higher than expected in January, and 2026’s average energy prices would be 24% higher compared with 2025.
Energy price spikes resulting from the Iran war and the subsequent disruption of tanker and other shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz are core factors in the commodity price hike forecast.
But they are not the only factors.
As chronicled in the Substack Shipping News (“Shipping lanes redrawn…”), shipping’s chokepoint chess match extends far beyond the Middle East and its geopolitical conflicts.
Roughly 80% or more of global trade depends on the unhindered passage through eight major shipping chokepoints around the world.
Hormuz is the main energy chokepoint.
Considering that close to 35% of global seaborne trade in crude oil, 20% of refined petroleum products, and 20% of trade in liquefied natural gas normally transits Hormuz, energy price volatility and bunker price spikes ranging between 60% and 80% are not surprising.
Those spikes have upsides.
Along with robust gold exports, they helped Canada record a trade surplus in March.
The CMO projects the average per-barrel Brent oil price to be around US$86 this year, which is US$26 (or 43%) higher than predicted in January.
It adds that a more protracted disruption of Hormuz shipping traffic could push that per-barrel price up to between US$95 and US$115 (50% to 92% higher than January’s prediction).
However, that is just energy.
The Middle East accounts for less than 5% of global container shipping throughput, so the Iran war and the Hormuz standoff are not major barriers to the trade in higher-end products shipped in containers.
The WBG’s fertilizers index surged to a post-2022 high in March, which the CMO notes is the second-largest monthly price increase of the last decade. The main driver of that surge, says the CMO, is the price of urea, the world’s most widely used nitrogen fertilizer.
However, the conflict is increasingly affecting the price and trade of other commodities.
Demand for palm and soybean oil and other biofuels, for example, has risen dramatically as the market for oil alternatives booms.
The WBG’s fertilizers index surged to a post-2022 high in March, which the CMO notes is the second-largest monthly price increase of the last decade. The main driver of that surge, says the CMO, is the price of urea, the world’s most widely used nitrogen fertilizer.
The Middle East is a major global urea hub. It accounts for between 35% and 45% of total traded urea and exports around 20 million tonnes annually.
Aluminum is another key industrial commodity whose production has been disrupted by the Middle East conflict.
Iranian attacks on aluminum companies in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s top aluminum producers, have contributed to aluminum price inflation.
It jumped 10% in March compared with the previous month, which the CMO says is the second-largest monthly increase in the past decade.
The increase contrasts with the price of some other industrial metals, which have softened as prospects for global industrial growth have weakened.
Precious metals in early 2026, on the other hand, have been on what the CMO describes as “extended blistering rallies.”
And although those rallies have cooled slightly, the WBG’s precious metals index jumped 84% in Q1 2026 compared with Q1 2025.
The CMO’s forecasts are based on the most serious disruptions and shortages from the Iran war ending in May.
Regardless of that timeline, however, the long-term retooling and rerouting of major shipping lanes to prioritize security over efficiency has only just begun.
As has the calculation of that retooling’s cost implications up and down the global supply chain.
www.linkedin.com/in/timothyrenshaw
@trenshaw24.bsky.social
@timothyrenshaw