Who are we?

Ask one of our clients to describe CRU and you’d probably get a response like this:

“They’re the experts in global mining, metals and fertilizers. Whatever you want, they can deliver, from market analysis to consulting to events.”

The fact is, since we were founded in the 1960s, as a privately-owned company, we have striven to meet a single performance criterion: to be the best at what we do.

That means supporting our clients with market analysis, management consultancy and events concentrating solely on these three key industries: mining, metals, fertilizers.

We specialise in commodities. That’s a global business. So we are too. Our people speak over 25 languages and are based in key strategic , from our London HQ to our regional offices.

Our values and beliefs

Our analysts, consultants and event producers have a shared mission: to deliver the highest quality business intelligence and advice to our clients in the worldwide metals, mining and fertilizer industries.

Everything we do is underpinned by our independence. Put simply, we tell it like it is, without fear or favour. We don’t have to check with a corporate parent to see if they approve of our conclusion. We aren’t in thrall to big corporate sponsors or advertisers.

We produce research because we believe it will benefit our clients, not because we think it’s newsworthy. Our events are primarily about content (though of course they’re perfect networking opportunities because so many top metals, mining and fertilizer executives attend).

And our consulting projects are still run on a strictly independent basis, even if that means giving a client a difficult truth. It also means rejecting any offers of success fees as even this could be seen as influencing a project outcome.

Read more about our values on the .

Our history

CRU was founded in 1969 by our Chairman, Robert Perlman, and his colleague John Horam.

The company was originally named Commodities Research Unit. We changed it to CRU as we expanded our offering to include more than just research.

Over the years we have made a number of strategic acquisitions to enable us to meet more of our clients needs:

1986 – British Sulphur Corporation
1996 – Resource Strategies Inc
2006 – KMI Research
2006 – Commodity Metals Management Company
2012 –
2012 –

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CRU in China

Did you know that CRU has been operating in China since the late 1980s? And since 2004 has had a full-time local presence in Beijing with an office of 20 full time staff.

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