Patent ID: 6907402

Claim:
A method of buying and selling commodities comprising: a. identifying suppliers of commodities having surplus capacities; b. entering into take or pay supply agreements for a plurality of commodities with one or more of said suppliers, each of said supply agreements specifying a cost for an individual commodity, said cost being less than market cost for said individual commodity in the absence of said take or pay supply agreement; c. identifying combinations of commodities which are generally used by industrial consumers and establishing a price for each combination using a processing device, said price being the sum of the cost of the individual commodities specified in said supply agreements plus a profit factor but said price being lower than the sum of said market costs of said individual commodities; d. establishing a Web site at which said identified combinations of commodities are offered for sale at said price, wherein no price for an individual commodity is quoted; wherein said price is automatically adjusted by a processing device based on one or more factors selected from the group consisting of currency exchange rates, currency risk, credit risk, country specific political risk, delivery dates, delivery locations, freight costs, Customs duties, and remaining available amount of each commodity in a particular combination under said take or pay supply agreements; and wherein a relational database is used to process data to identify said suppliers of commodities having surplus capacities and rank the surplus capacities of commodities in order of best opportunities for profitable disposal of commodities and/or largest spread between cost to purchase said surplus capacities and probable selling price of said commodities.