China Maleic Anhydride Supply Tightens as Top Producers Halt Spot Quotations

On July 23, 2026, Chinese trade media reported that two of the country's largest butane-based maleic anhydride producers, Zibo Qixiang Tengda and Huizhou Yuxin New Materials, stopped publishing spot quotations at the same time. Neither plant has stopped running. Both are operating at high load, but their output is being channelled into long-term contracts and export orders instead of the open spot market. The result is a sharp reduction in freely tradable maleic anhydride inside China, which is the world's largest producer and net exporter of the product.

The scale of the two companies explains why the move matters. Qixiang Tengda operates roughly 400,000 tons per year of butane-based capacity, the single largest position in the Chinese industry. Huizhou Yuxin runs four lines with a combined nameplate of about 200,000 tons per year and has kept them at full rate using n-butane delivered from nearby refineries. Together the two producers control close to 600,000 tons per year of core butane capacity. Their withdrawal from public quoting removes the reference prices that traders and resin buyers normally work from. Dongying Qifa, a smaller producer running a 30,000 tons per year unit, has taken the same approach, keeping the plant online while holding back offers and serving only established accounts.

The second driver of the squeeze sits on the older benzene oxidation route. Pure benzene remains expensive enough that benzene-based maleic anhydride costs well over 1,000 yuan per ton more to produce than the butane equivalent. Shanxi Hengqiang has kept its 40,000 tons per year benzene unit idle with no announced restart date and is running only its 5,000 tons per year fumaric acid line at reduced rates to limit losses. This is a continuation of a multi-year trend rather than a new event. Chinese benzene-based capacity had already fallen to around 237,000 tons per year by the end of 2025, under 18 percent of the national total, while the butane route accounted for more than 76 percent of output.

New capacity that was expected to loosen the balance has not arrived. The Panjin Liancheng project in Liaoning still has its first-phase 40,000 tons per year butane unit offline, and construction on the planned second-phase unit has slipped without a firm commissioning date. Industry watchers no longer expect meaningful new volume from the site before the end of 2026.

The current tightness follows an unusually volatile eighteen months. Chinese maleic anhydride prices fell through most of 2025, ending the year near 5,113 RMB per ton after a wave of new plants pushed the market into surplus. That reversed in the first quarter of 2026. The partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz lifted crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas, and n-butane in Shandong climbed toward 7,200 RMB per ton. The national average maleic anhydride price reached 8,350 RMB per ton by March 23, a gain of 7.4 percent in a single week, and China FOB values moved from roughly 800 USD per ton in late February to close to 1,150 USD per ton by mid-April. Prices then drifted lower through the second quarter, with the domestic average at 8,113 RMB per ton on May 27 and Shandong ex-factory solid grade quoted between 7,100 and 7,600 RMB per ton.

What makes the July situation unusual is that feedstock relief has arrived at the same time as the spot squeeze. Saudi Aramco cut its July contract price for butane by about 27 percent to 600 USD per ton, the widest reduction in years, and shipping risk across the Middle East has eased. Producers running the butane route are therefore seeing costs fall while they simultaneously restrict spot availability. The tightness now visible in the Chinese market is commercial rather than physical, driven by allocation decisions and contract priority rather than by plant failures.

Downstream exposure is concentrated. Unsaturated polyester resin accounts for close to half of Chinese maleic anhydride demand and feeds construction panels, marine composites, sanitary ware and wind turbine blades. The second major outlet is 1,4-butanediol, which supports spandex fibre, engineering polymers and biodegradable plastics such as PBAT and PBS. Resin producers have been operating at low rates through a weak property cycle and have limited ability to absorb higher input costs, so a prolonged period of restricted spot supply is likely to translate into deferred orders rather than higher resin output.

Export buyers face the same constraint. China shipped close to 177,000 tons of maleic anhydride in the first nine months of 2025, a rise of 15 percent year on year after a 36 percent jump in 2024, and low-priced Chinese cargoes had displaced South Korean and Malaysian material across Asia. Importers in India, Turkey and Southeast Asia that built procurement plans around cheap Chinese offers now have fewer sellers willing to quote, and replacement cargoes from other origins carry a premium.

The balance is expected to stay tight into August. Benzene-based units have no economic reason to restart while pure benzene stays elevated, the leading butane producers are holding term commitments they intend to honour first, and the Panjin Liancheng volume will not materialise this year. The signals worth tracking are the August Saudi contract price announcement, any resumption of public quoting by Qixiang Tengda or Huizhou Yuxin, and whether autumn construction demand pulls resin operating rates off their current lows.