The ETF offering provides access to firms operating in sectors such as alternative energy, coal, oil and gas, steel and gold mining. The new ETFs add to the company's’ existing suite of ETCs which provides investors with direct long, short and leveraged exposure to world commodity markets.

“The decision to launch equity ETFs on thematic sectors has come largely from our clients who have consistently asked ETF Securities to provide them with more investment opportunities, particularly themes or sectors they are currently unable to access through ETCs,” said Graham Tuckwell, chairman of ETF Securities.

These include industry sectors such as water, coal, alternative energy and oil and gas, which are currently not available through ETCs due to the difficulties in getting exposure to the underlying asset.

The new ETF offering complements the existing ETC offering. There are times when commodities outperform comparable commodity companies and times when commodity companies will outperform the relevant commodities, depending on market conditions.

The ETFs are based on two US equity benchmarks: the US large-cap Russell 1000 Index and US small-cap Russell 2000 Index. ETF Securities also licensed four commodity sector indices tracking companies from the global shipping, coal, steel and gold industries.

Other indexes include: The DAXglobal Alternative Energy Index, the WNA Nuclear Energy Index, the Janney Global Water Index, the S-Network ITG Agriculture Index; the Dow Jones STOXX 600 Basic Resources and the Dow Jones STOXX 600 Oil and Gas and Dow Jones STOXX 600 Utilities indexes.

The management of ETF Securities say they were responsible for rolling out the world's first listing of an ETC: Gold Bullion Securities in Australia and London in 2003. It also launched the world's first entire ETC platform which was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2006.