UNDERCOVERED Commodities · Independent Supply Chain Research

Independent research on physical commodity markets where the public source record is thin, fragmented or internally inconsistent.

Undercovered Commodities publishes source-led notes built from trade records, official releases and reconstructed datasets. The emphasis is on what can be established from the record, where the record breaks down, and which conclusions remain provisional.

Published research

Issue 1

Phantom Gum Issue 1 cover
Sudan · Sahel · Soft Commodities · August 2026

Phantom Gum

Sudan's gum arabic trade survived the war's first two years. Its origins did not.
Cormac Higgins · UN Comtrade, HS 130120 · Eight destination markets
Buyer-side customs data complicate the standard account of a collapse in Sudanese gum arabic supply followed by straightforward substitution elsewhere in the Sahel. Across the eight-market sample, declared imports from Sudan remained above the 2019 level in 2024, while imports attributed to several neighbouring and regional partners were also materially higher. The note separates the recorded trade fact from the harder question of harvest origin.
69,980 tDeclared 2024 imports from Sudan across the eight destination markets, compared with 65,862 t in 2019.
56,761 tBuyer-declared 2024 imports attributed to Chad, Mali, Egypt and South Sudan, compared with 24,145 t in 2019. Declared partner country is not verified harvest origin.
2019-25Coverage period used in the published note, with 2025 explicitly treated as partial because of filing gaps.
Read Issue 1 Method and evidence boundary
Declared gum arabic imports by partner group, 2019 to 2025
Exhibit from Issue 1. UN Comtrade, HS 130120. 2025 is partial. Aggregates are recorded border movements and should not be read as unique physical production.
Research index

Published and in development

The items below describe work underway. They are not presented as published coverage or as a subscription service.

MarketStatusCurrent work
Gum arabicPublishedIssue 1 examines buyer-side trade records across Sudan and the Sahel. Follow-up work tests bilateral mirror statistics and origin attribution.
HazelnutsIn developmentTurkey: TMO intervention history, GTB market records, export unit values and crop-year price formation.
TeaIn developmentReconstruction and validation of auction, production and export series, with emphasis on India and other major producing markets.
TungstenIn developmentAPT series reconstruction, trade flows and the relationship between mine feed, conversion capacity and downstream pricing.
TinIn developmentIndonesia-led trade data lake using customs records to reconcile ore, unwrought metal and export flows.
Dry bulkIn developmentPhysical-flow monitor for seaborne and rail movements, including vessel data and route-level supply-chain signals.

Publication follows the source record rather than a fixed timetable. A programme remains in development until the underlying data are sufficiently reconciled to support a note.

Method

Evidence is separated from interpretation.

The research starts with the source record: customs data, government releases, exchange or market bulletins, company disclosures and other primary material where available.

Series are reconstructed before conclusions are drawn. Publication lags, missing reporters, changing classifications, outliers and differences between importer and exporter records are treated as part of the analysis rather than hidden in the appendix.

Each note states the boundary between the observed record and the interpretation placed on it.

FactWhat the cited record directly shows.
InferenceThe interpretation judged most consistent with that record.
UnknownMaterial questions the available evidence cannot resolve.
ForecastA forward-looking claim stated in a form that can later be tested.
About

Undercovered Commodities

Undercovered Commodities began from an interest in how physical commodity markets form prices when the source record is incomplete. The project focuses on markets where useful information often sits across customs databases, local bulletins, government publications and fragmented historical records rather than in a single clean dataset.

The institutional presentation is deliberate; the authorship is not anonymous. Each note identifies its author, sources, methodology and evidential limits.

Cormac Higgins

Author

Cormac Higgins is a final-year economics student at the University of Liverpool and the author of the research published here. He has worked as a summer analyst at the Government Economic Service, building macroeconomic scenario models, and on the FX and equities desk at Velocity Trade International.

Corrections & updates

A public record of substantive changes.

Published notes are versioned. Material factual corrections are dated here. New analysis that changes an interpretation is published as a new issue rather than silently rewritten into an earlier note.

No corrections recorded for Issue 1.

Future corrections, source amendments and links to follow-up issues will appear here.