The Country Nobody Named Ships Half Your Silicon
Four more silicon metal orders were continued last Thursday, closing out eleven months in which eight origins moved under duty. Brazil was in the last case, won it in 2018, and was left out of this one. It now supplies 56 percent of the US import book, and every origin under order combined adds up to less than half of what Brazil ships alone.
The Ledger
Every entry →- Sep 76 min read
Who Sold You PFA While Washington Works Was Down?
Chemours filed against perfluoroalkoxy alkane from India on August 5 and told Commerce it is the only producer of PFA in the United States. The period of investigation runs July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, the same stretch in which its Parkersburg plant lost a critical piece of equipment to a utility outage and then shut down entirely in January. The ITC votes on September 21.
Subscribers - Sep 74 min read
What a Toll Blender Buys First
ReAgent has blended chemicals in Cheshire since 1977 and never operated outside the UK. Last month it opened 25,000 square feet in Winston-Salem, and the equipment it bought first says more about how the formulation layer actually works than any capacity table does.
Free - Sep 74 min read
Sri Lanka Reprices Your Carbon Bed
US activated carbon imports ran 8.6 percent lighter through June and cost 10.9 percent more. The delivered price hit $3.57 a kilo, the coconut-shell origins did nearly all of the moving, and the domestic reactivation capacity that would relieve it starts in 2028.
Subscribers - Sep 64 min read
The Polysilicon Floor Lands on Malaysia
Section 232 put a $21 per kilogram minimum import price on HTSUS 2804.61 starting December 4. In 2025 that line carried 6,791 tonnes, four fifths of it Malaysian at $15.66 a kilo, and the Chinese share was 27 tonnes at $73.
Free - Sep 65 min read
How a Take-or-Pay Tonne Floats Its Own Start Date
Smackover Lithium has now sold roughly 90% of its targeted offtake at South West Arkansas. Both contracts start on a date the filings moved back a year, and only one of them ends up with a company that actually consumes lithium carbonate.
Subscribers - Sep 66 min read
Fifty-Five Percent of a Methanol Plant
Methanex sold substantially all of its New Zealand gas entitlements on Tuesday and will indefinitely idle Motunui in the first quarter of 2027. Every closure list this week will carry the number 860,000 tonnes. The site has produced at 55 percent of that for six straight quarters, so the tonnes actually leaving are closer to 474,000, and the gas risk in Methanex's book moves to Louisiana.
Subscribers - Sep 54 min read
The Ordinance Said Nonhazardous
Saukville's zoning code permitted nonhazardous chemical manufacturing and had no category at all for the plant Ereztech wanted to build there, so the site that now turns out a US-qualified cobalt precursor needed a use determination before it could exist. Its whole published output ladder stops short of a tonne.
Free - Sep 55 min read
The Lysine Left China Before the Duty Did
The ITC voted lysine from China injurious on Wednesday, the last step before July's margins become orders. The book those orders protect already moved: China went from 98.6 percent of first-half US imports to 37.6 percent while the case was still running, and Korea took the difference. Also on the file: three citric acid origins enter review in one notice, Advancion buys fifty more days on Tris, PET film's annual sweep opens, and EPA pushes RFS reporting to October 1.
Subscribers - Sep 53 min read
The Fifty-Six Rates That Just Locked
Ninety-four antidumping and countervailing duty orders had their review window open on July 1 and close on July 31. Thirty-eight drew a request. Eighteen of the ninety-four cover chemicals, exactly half of those were reviewed, and methionine, polyvinyl alcohol, persulfates and potassium phosphate salts were not among them. The September window closes on the 30th.
Subscribers - Sep 46 min read
The Byproduct That Can't Be Turned Off
EPA's draft risk evaluation for 1,2-dichloropropane published this morning and flags 14 of the 15 conditions of use it assessed, disposal included. Two US plants make the chemical without meaning to, three buy it, and the only lever that moves the volume sits upstream in propylene oxide and epichlorohydrin.
Subscribers - Sep 46 min read
Nobody Asked About the Other Ten
Commerce opened the first administrative review of the vanillin order from China today, and exactly one company is in it: the exporter it refused a separate rate to last year. Chinese vanillin fell from $52.5m to $1.7m in one year and the rest of your book got 44 percent more expensive.
Subscribers - Sep 43 min read
How Much of the Chemical Tariff Did the Court Take?
Two Julys apart, US chemical imports cleared customs within twenty million dollars of each other, and the duty assessed on them fell by $249 million. The Supreme Court struck the IEEPA tariffs in February, and just over half the increase since 2024 is still standing.
Free - Sep 35 min read
Who Makes Your Connecting Pins in 2027?
GrafTech is closing Monterrey and moving pin stock to Pamplona, and together the two moves take 51,000 tonnes out of a business already running at a 125,600 tonne rate. Also on the file: DOE cuts Calumet's renewable loan guarantee by more than half, EPA grants relief to 29 of 34 small refineries, four silicon metal orders renew without a defense, and a spreadsheet fix moves an Omani PET rate.
Subscribers - Sep 34 min read
Three Countries Take the Whole Acrylonitrile Book
US acrylonitrile exports have halved since 2019, and every tonne of the decline is Asian. Turkiye, Mexico and Peru now take 96 percent of what leaves the country, one of them on a metronome, which changes what your supplier can say yes to on 2027 volume.
Subscribers - Sep 34 min read
How Aberdeen Learned an Enzyme
Sterling Specialty Chemicals ran three plant-level actions in eight months at the old American Cyanamid polyacrylamide franchise. Its parent Praana Group closed two more chemicals franchises in the same window.
Free - Sep 26 min read
Your Grade Spec Has a Docket Number Now
A customs rulemaking published this morning asks whether importers should hand over the export declaration their foreign supplier filed at home, and whether composition and grade belong on the entry itself. Commerce has opened 17 circumvention inquiries this year, the most since at least 2010, and the document CBP is asking about would settle most of what those inquiries are trying to prove.
Subscribers - Sep 25 min read
The C4 Merchant Stops Selling the Spread
TPC holds the largest North American share in butadiene, raffinate, 1-butene and polybutene out of a single Houston plant, and it lost $34 million last year. ENEOS closes in October, and an owner with its own rubber plants values those molecules differently than a merchant does.
Subscribers - Sep 23 min read
Seventeen Industries Reported. Chemicals Finished Last.
The ISM's August report landed Tuesday morning. Fifteen manufacturing industries grew, two contracted, and chemicals was the second of the two. July was worse: chemicals was the only industry in the country going backwards, in the strongest headline month of the year.
Free - Sep 14 min read
The Pentane Plant With Two Capacities
South Hampton Resources has quietly turned Silsbee, Texas into roughly four times the plant it was in 2004, and its own EPA filings show the climb. The last increment of headroom was never a steel problem.
Free - Sep 15 min read
Is Your B-Side Twenty Percent Esters?
Commerce opened two more circumvention inquiries on the alkyl phosphate ester orders this morning, and three of the four now open reach past the molecule into finished spray-foam systems. Also on the file: a court pulls nitrogen-15 back out of the ammonium sulfate orders, Chemours gets its India case, and chemicals is one of only two industries the ISM has contracting.
Subscribers - Sep 18 min read
Eight Closures, One Tonnage
The August edition of the ledger, seventeen entries, and the units switched sides. One of eight removals published a capacity figure. Six of eight additions did, and the reason has nothing to do with which way the capacity was going.
Subscribers - Aug 316 min read
The Paraxylene Gap Was Never the Problem
Anellotech is liquidating, and DSI is marketing the Silsbee TCat-8 unit at about $18 million. The market it was built for got better the whole time: US paraxylene imports passed exports in 2022 and have led them every year since.
Subscribers - Aug 313 min read
How Many of the New Chemical Sites Are Plants?
BLS added 662 US chemical establishments to the count on Friday, the twelfth straight annual increase, and the sector employed 4,108 fewer people than a year earlier. Texas alone gained 147 addresses and lost 1,237 jobs.
Free - Aug 304 min read
Twenty-Seven Percent, and Not One Molecule Changed
EIA's Wednesday release put Ohio industrial power at 10.21 cents a kilowatthour for the first half of 2026, against 8.00 cents a year earlier. Henry Hub moved 4.1% across the same window, so the fuel did not do this. The auction that did has already cleared two more delivery years, both at the cap.
Subscribers - Aug 304 min read
The Ring and the Tail Come From the Same Shell
COIM USA is building the first US plant dedicated to its cashew nutshell liquid polyol line, at Texarkana, with roughly 100 million pounds a year of planned capacity. The interesting part is that cardanol is an aromatic, which is the one thing bio-based polyols normally cannot offer a rigid foam formulator.
Free - Aug 306 min read
The Cheapest Kilo That Isn't Chinese
Chemours wants duties of up to 56.57 percent on Indian PFA, the resin a fab's ultrapure chemistry runs inside. The Commission's preliminary record closes tomorrow at 5:15. India landed at $18.77 a kilo last year, and every origin in the heading except China costs more.
Subscribers - Aug 296 min read
Which Huntsman Entity Signs Your 2027 Order?
Olin shareholders cleared a two-thirds bar on August 25 and picked the direct merger, so Huntsman Corporation stops existing at close and Huntsman International LLC stops filing. The path they did not pick is the one that would have fired a change of control.
Subscribers - Aug 295 min read
The Antitrust Clearance Was the Easy Part
The FTC granted early termination on the $14.5 billion Solstice acquisition of Element Solutions on August 12. Both boards killed the deal fifteen days later, with no break fee either way and a $500 million buyback in its place. Plus a bromine producer running 16% of its plant into a 34% price rise, two finished TRISO plants waiting on a licence, and an eighth straight sweep with nothing closed.
Subscribers - Aug 294 min read
How Israel Gained Fifty Thousand Tonnes of Bromine on Paper
USGS restated Israel's 2024 bromine production from 140,000 tonnes to 190,000 in the February edition of the same table, and carried the world total up 40,000 with it. Israel was 83% of US bromine imports over 2021 to 2024 and 89% through July 2025, and the concession that produces it runs to 2030.
Free - Aug 283 min read
One Centimetre Short of a Lift Letter
The Rhine rallied 71 centimetres off its trough and not one gauge reached the level its own fairway is designed around. Kaub missed by a single centimetre, which is why Dormagen's force majeure has a case to lift and Ludwigshafen's does not.
Subscribers - Aug 284 min read
How Long Does an Idled Plant Stay Restartable?
Greatham's chloride line sat dark for ten months, six of them with nobody in a position to spend money on it. It came back on August 20 under its old brand and its old grade codes, and what stands between it and 150,000 tonnes a year is a recruitment campaign.
Free - Aug 286 min read
Fifty More Days on Grade 1800
Commerce moved the PTMEG preliminary determinations to November 4 this morning, fifty days later than they were due, and the petitioner is the one who asked for it. The grade spandex runs on has no US producer and no non-subject import source anywhere in the Commission's record.
Subscribers - Aug 274 min read
The Spike Stopped at the Formulator
Petrochemical producer prices are up 23.7% over twelve months and the whole upstream half of chemical manufacturing came with them. Three industries print below last July, and all three of them formulate rather than crack.
Free - Aug 276 min read
The Order Never Covered the Acid
CHS and OCP announced a phosphate plant at Waggaman on Wednesday, and OCP Group will supply the phosphoric acid. Item eleven on the 2021 countervailing duty order's exclusion list is phosphoric acid, the cash deposit rate on the finished granule is 16.60 percent, and Commerce's July preliminary says 20.04.
Subscribers - Aug 274 min read
Is Your Degreaser on the December 2019 List?
EPA put the trans-1,2-dichloroethylene draft risk evaluation out this morning with a preliminary finding of unreasonable risk, and it is the eighteenth of the twenty substances designated high-priority in December 2019. Four of those eighteen landed in the last seventeen days. Plus thirty-five new SNURs dated to the same day in October, a June new-chemicals queue that is mostly a battery queue, and five more names in the DEA registration file.
Subscribers - Aug 264 min read
Ten Dollars and Twenty Cents a Ton on Imported MDI
Huntsman has petitioned the IRS to add MDI to the Superfund list of taxable substances, and the notice of filing published this morning. The rate in the petition is $10.20 a ton. The rate for an importer who cannot document the chemistry is ten percent of appraised value.
Subscribers - Aug 266 min read
India's Citric Acid Case Has a Chinese Origin Problem
One petition, two countries, two preliminary determinations published this morning. The Canadian producer showed up and got a 0.00 percent dumping margin. The Indian respondent quit in June and took 151.73 percent, and the reason it quit is a CBP evasion case that says the merchandise was never Indian.
Subscribers - Aug 264 min read
Charlotte Coats a Film North America Doesn't Make Yet
Asahi Kasei opened a wet-process separator coating line at the 40-year-old Celgard plant in Charlotte on August 20. The base film that line is built to coat will not be made on this continent until Port Colborne starts in 2027, and the company's own capital numbers say that ordering was the point.
Free - Aug 253 min read
Who Gets Out of New Chemicals Review Without an Order?
EPA's statements of findings for May reached the Federal Register on Tuesday with two entries on it. The unrestricted exit from section 5 review ran 267 determinations in fiscal 2019 and 18 so far in fiscal 2026, and of the 106 fiscal-2026 reviews that ended in permission to commercialize, 88 came with an order attached.
Free - Aug 255 min read
Twenty-Nine Basic Classes, One Chattanooga Address
Eleven DEA registration notices landed in a single Federal Register issue on Tuesday, and one Chattanooga plant applied to make twenty-nine basic classes of controlled substance. Another names the federal API stockpile outright, and the first visible transaction under it is an application to import. Plus the 2026 national ceilings, an EPA clearance list running 86 days behind, and a new CFO at a sulfuric acid regenerator.
Subscribers - Aug 256 min read
How the R-32 Duty Stops at Eighty-Five Percent
Commerce renewed the antidumping order on Chinese R-32 through 2031 on August 4. The scope catches the neat molecule at up to 221.06 percent and stops sixteen points above the blend that replaced R-410A in most new residential systems, while EPA counts that same blend at 465.
Subscribers - Aug 244 min read
Your Antimony Alternative Now Has an American Half
Synthomer sold William Blythe for 30 million pounds in May 2025. Fifteen months later the 1845 Accrington inorganics house is the smaller side of a 160 million dollar group whose largest region is North America, and the flame retardant line it carries is the one sold as an antimony trioxide replacement.
Free - Aug 243 min read
What Did Your 2024 Benzotriazole Actually Enter At?
The antidumping order on tolyltriazole and benzotriazole from China was continued on August 4, and no Chinese producer filed a word against it. The rate on the same two exporters has been 6.12 percent, then 128.88, and the preliminary answer for your March 2024 to February 2025 entries is 61.51.
Subscribers - Aug 246 min read
How a Chemical Nobody Here Makes Gets a TSCA Rule
EPA put the ethylene dibromide draft risk evaluation out on August 19 and preliminarily found that 10 of 12 conditions of use significantly contribute to unreasonable risk. Every pound in the file is import volume, reported by two companies, and the demand base underneath it just printed its highest year since 2019.
Subscribers - Aug 234 min read
Twenty-Eight Points Under One Utilization Rate
The Federal Reserve put US chemical capacity utilization at 71.6% for July. The Census survey that supplies most of that number publishes the lines underneath it, and in the same quarter they run from 88.0% down to 59.6%.
Free - Aug 236 min read
The Nitrapyrin Plant Is Closing in Installments
California's layoff file got one more line on Tuesday: two employees at 901 Loveridge Road in Pittsburg, effective October 30. It is the twentieth notice filed at that address since July 2023, the twenty of them name 155 people, and the state's own safety list says the site closes in December.
Subscribers - Aug 235 min read
Idle Capacity Shows Up in the Footnotes First
A specialty chemicals maker in Illinois pulled ten reporting periods on Friday because it had been capitalizing fixed overhead without regard to normal capacity. The correction took $3.5m out of inventory and the same $3.5m out of equity. Plus a Chinese owner restarts 150,000 tonnes of British pigment inside a dumping case its competitor filed, iodine prints a record $73.40 a kilogram, and carbon black borrows at 4.95% to repay 3.40%.
Subscribers - Aug 226 min read
Which Half of the Paprika Oleoresin Duty Is Live Today?
Commerce finalized both India cases on Friday: 25.42 percent countervailing on Synthite, 5.78 percent dumping. Only the smaller half is being collected right now, and the window shuts when the ITC votes.
Subscribers - Aug 224 min read
The Hormuz Premium Skipped Mont Belvieu
Crude went from $61 to $118 after February 28 and US propane barely moved. A propane barrel has spent 2026 averaging 36.6 percent of a WTI barrel, the cheapest of the thirty-four annual averages EIA's Mont Belvieu series supports, and every propylene derivative escalator written off crude is now indexed to a feedstock your supplier may not be buying.
Subscribers - Aug 224 min read
How a Custom Manufacturer Buys Its Own Demand
MFG Chemical closed its fourth acquisition in four years on August 12. The published capacity underneath all of it is twenty-six reactors and a gallon range, which is exactly why a closure-and-addition file never sees a company like this.
Free - Aug 215 min read
Whose Force Majeure Comes Off First?
The Rhine at Kaub bottomed at 5 centimetres on Monday and reads 46 this morning, a 41-centimetre reversal in four days, and not one of the letters written on that low water has come off yet. Plus the silicon metal orders publish with two duty-free holes in them, a dumping case that collects nothing, and three chemical sites walk off the Superfund list.
Subscribers - Aug 213 min read
The Closure Wave Never Reached the Tank Cars
US railroads moved 1,082,288 carloads of chemicals through the first 32 weeks of 2026, more than through the same week of any year since at least 2018, and they did it while counting one railroad less than they counted in 2022. The Federal Reserve's basic chemical index printed its lowest month since December 2022 in the same window.
Free - Aug 215 min read
Catalyst Refiners Stopped Refining
The federal safety board's August 13 update fixed a capacity date nobody had published: the West Virginia plant that reclaimed silver from spent ethylene oxide catalyst had already ceased operations before the accident that made it news. Silver averaged 34% more last year than the year before, and scrap is now about half of everything US refiners turn out. That combination is why the reclaim clause in your catalyst agreement is worth reading again this week.
Subscribers - Aug 203 min read
One Pipeline From a Refinery to a Drug Master File
gChem's Tuscaloosa complex takes a sulfur stream from the refinery next door and turns it into the only DMSO made in the Americas. An $850m agreement this month is why it is worth introducing.
Free - Aug 205 min read
One Houston Plant, Thirty-Five Percent of the Butadiene
ENEOS signed a merger agreement for TPC Holdings on August 7 and expects to close in October. The release carries three years of TPC's accounts, which nobody had seen: operating income of $118m in 2024, $25m in 2025, and a net loss. The largest merchant crude C4 processor in North America runs one production site, and it just found a strategic owner whose rubber lines are all in Asia.
Subscribers - Aug 203 min read
How Synthetic Rubber Got Thirty Percent More Out of the Same Plants
The Fed's July numbers, out Tuesday, put synthetic rubber capacity utilization at 60.7%, up 13.8 points from a September 2024 trough that only one month in fifty-four years has ever undercut. Capacity moved 1.1% over that stretch. The entire gain is production, and it lands on butadiene demand eight weeks before the plant that makes 35% of North America's supply changes owner.
Subscribers - Aug 194 min read
Which Closure Took Pigments Back to 1982?
The Fed's production index for synthetic dye and pigment manufacturing printed 58.8 for July, the second-lowest month in a series that starts in 1972. No US closure in our file accounts for it, and the Board publishes no capacity number for the code, so nobody can tell you whether the plants are gone or just slow.
Free - Aug 195 min read
Losing Twenty-Six Thousand Tonnes Was the Good Quarter
Trinseo shut its own MMA monomer, folded German polystyrene into one Belgian plant, and then a storm took that plant out for five weeks. Company volume fell from 334 kilotonnes to 308. The segment that gave up the most volume took its adjusted EBITDA from $5m to $43m, which is the number to have in front of you at renewal.
Subscribers - Aug 195 min read
How Your Silicone Feedstock Became a Trade Case
Nine origins now carry a US duty order on silicon metal, and the two newest were signed on August 14. Plus Olin and Huntsman vote Tuesday on projections they disclosed only this week, EPA calls ethylene dibromide an unreasonable risk, a Russian phosphate rate drops five points on a benchmark ruling, and Kaub turned.
Subscribers - Aug 184 min read
Five Hundred Thousand Pounds, No New Plant
Ascent Industries' process engineers pulled more than 500,000 pounds a year of extra capacity out of a reaction asset it already owned. Total capital spending across the company that quarter was $754,000. Nothing about it will ever appear in a capacity database, including ours.
Free - Aug 184 min read
Everything Fell Except What You Import
July producer prices took 2.9% off industrial chemicals and this morning's BLS release took 2.8% off US chemical export prices, the sharpest month in three years. The chemical import index moved five hundredths of a percent, and the China-origin index rose 1.7%. If your contract escalator cites a domestic series, your imported volume is not getting that relief.
Subscribers - Aug 185 min read
Does Your Antimony Contract Run Past November 27?
China banned antimony exports to the United States in December 2024 and the price nearly tripled. Beijing suspended that ban last November, the price round-tripped, and the suspension runs out on November 27. Montana's only primary smelter finished nine new furnaces into the trough, and has a $245m government contract standing in front of your order.
Subscribers - Aug 176 min read
The Deposit Came Before the Capacity
A $12.5 million line called Refundable deposits appeared on FutureFuel's balance sheet this quarter and did not exist at March 31. It is a customer's money, it is paying for a plant expansion at Batesville, and the capacity it buys does not run until early fiscal 2028.
Subscribers - Aug 173 min read
How the Capex Cuts Missed the Job Site
Every producer we have read this earnings season guided capital lower. National spending on chemical plant construction ran $43.8 billion a year in June, six percent off its all-time high, while semiconductor construction fell by more than half.
Free - Aug 175 min read
Four Chinese Producers, One Exclusion Order
A judge found a Section 337 violation on PVDF resin and recommended shutting four Chinese producers out at the border. Plus Chemours petitions against Indian PFA, a twenty-one-year-old pigment order dies because nobody filed a form, choline salts clears its injury test, and Kaub printed a five.
Subscribers - Aug 165 min read
Who Reports the Chlorine Now?
Berkshire's second-quarter filing landed on Monday and gave OxyChem two numbers: $1.4bn of revenue and $149m of pre-tax earnings. Occidental used to publish a chlor-alkali business review, a capex line, and a completion date for the Battleground membrane conversion. That conversion is still due to finish this year.
Subscribers - Aug 163 min read
The Pigment Was Always the Byproduct
A hundred years ago a chemist at Uerdingen turned what aniline manufacture left behind into iron oxide pigment, and that reaction has run on the same site ever since. On August 11 Lanxess said the dryer at the end of it stopped burning natural gas and started burning the hydrogen the chlorine plant next door was going to make anyway.
Free - Aug 154 min read
Which Filing Moved a Tonne This Week?
Kaub printed 6 centimetres on Friday, nineteen under the 2018 record and three under the forecast we carried on Thursday. Everything else the industry filed in three days was a balance sheet: a bankrupt producer's meeting about nothing, a $350m bond, a $1.4bn tender.
Subscribers - Aug 154 min read
The Caustic Soda Index Skipped July
Thursday's PPI took 2.2% off alkalies and chlorine, the sharpest one-month drop in that series since January 2024. The sub-index that would tell you whether caustic caused it is the one BLS did not publish. Nine days earlier, Westlake guided the second half higher.
Subscribers - Aug 153 min read
Everyone Chemical Manufacturing Hired Since 2019 Works in Pharma
US chemical manufacturing employs 42,400 more people than it did at the end of 2019, and pharmaceuticals alone added 47,200 of them. Subtract the drug plants and the industry you actually buy from is smaller than it was before the pandemic.
Free - Aug 146 min read
Somebody Bought the Plant Tronox Closed
In January Tronox said it would permanently close its 46,000 tonne pigment plant in Jiangxi. Its August 6 filing says an unsolicited buyer took the assets, the environmental liabilities and the contract obligations on June 17 for $14 million net, and the closure column has no way to record that.
Subscribers - Aug 144 min read
Several Tons of Peptide a Year
Bachem inaugurated the largest plant it has ever built in April and is making commercial GMP product in it now. The only output figure anyone publishes for the site is three words long, and the guidance attached to it says the second half of 2026 has to run at nearly twice the first.
Free - Aug 135 min read
Which Gauge Shut the Polyol Line?
Covestro declared force majeure on Dormagen polyether polyols on August 7. Kaub, the gauge every wire quotes, went up that day. The gauge that governs the plant sits 198 kilometres downstream, and it had already gone under its all-time low.
Subscribers - Aug 135 min read
Twenty-One Dollars a Kilogram, Minimum
The polysilicon proclamation published Tuesday does something no chemical trade action this desk has read does: it sets a floor price at the border and charges you the difference if your entry comes in under it. Plus R-32 keeps its order for another five years, Kaub at 10 centimetres, and twelve days to the Olin vote.
Subscribers - Aug 134 min read
Aromatics Gave Back. The Intermediates Kept It.
July's producer price data landed this morning: the aromatics index fell 2.6% and the cyclic intermediates made out of it fell 0.7%, which is neither of the two outcomes we wrote down on Tuesday. The June number they both get measured against changed too.
Free - Aug 127 min read
Who Still Synthesizes in Los Angeles?
AMVAC's Los Angeles plant keeps its address, its payroll and its drums, and loses the ability to make a molecule from scratch on December 31. The whole public record of it is a transformation-expense footnote, no WARN notice appears in either California register, and last quarter the reorganization spent $682,000.
Subscribers - Aug 123 min read
The Gulf Coast Has Never Held This Much Propane
Wednesday's EIA report put Gulf Coast propane and propylene stocks at 66.9 million barrels, three weeks after the district printed the highest weekly figure in a series that starts in 2004. The national total is not a record. Almost the whole surplus is sitting in the one district where the dehydrogenation units take suction.
Subscribers - Aug 124 min read
How You Restart a Chloride Line
Tioxide expects single-stream pigment production back at Greatham this month, the first output from the Teesside site since it went idle late last year. Every published restart milestone is a people milestone: 132 employees transferred with the site in April, and 130 more positions have been announced since.
Free - Aug 113 min read
What Took the Intermediates Four Months?
Between February and June the BLS aromatics index gained 71.9%. The cyclic intermediates made out of those aromatics gained 13.3%. June was the first month the derivative layer moved faster than its own feedstock, and the July print lands Thursday.
Free - Aug 116 min read
How Two Plants Become One Establishment Number
STERIS is spending $600m to move its US formulated chemistries into one North Carolina site, and told the market on the way that neither plant it is closing can be expanded. The relief lands in fiscal 2029. The constraint is now, and the label on the drum is how you find out your SKU moved.
Subscribers - Aug 115 min read
Fifteen Million Pounds Wasn't Enough
Arq's activated carbon plant in Louisiana was commissioned a year ago and made on-spec product. Its 10-Q on Monday says it will produce nothing in fiscal 2026 or 2027, because the thermal oxidizer tops out at 15 million pounds and 15 million pounds doesn't pay. Plus Trinseo spending 24 cents on the dollar from inside Chapter 11, a lost month at Batesville, and Kaub at 14 centimetres.
Subscribers - Aug 104 min read
Three of Seventeen Replaced What They Wore Out
Seventeen US chemical filers have now closed their first half. Fourteen spent less capital than they charged in depreciation, the median came in at 74 cents on the dollar, and the only three above the line make fertilizer. Here is what a supplier running at 30 cents is telling you about its next turnaround.
Subscribers - Aug 105 min read
The Grade That Outlived Two Reactor Programs
A graphite grade built for a South African reactor program that lost its funding in 2010 spent this year becoming a commercial product line. On August 3, X-energy agreed to put up to $8 million into doubling the line that makes it, at a carbon plant in the French Alps, and the first reactors it feeds go up at a Dow chemical site in Texas.
Free - Aug 105 min read
How Your Intermediate Became a Pharmaceutical Article
Customs built a tariff heading whose entire job is to let you tell the government your organic chemical is not a drug. Every importer inside roughly 120 chapter 29 and 30 lines has been filing one of ten new headings since July 31, and on September 29 the rate attached to yours stops defaulting to zero.
Subscribers - Aug 96 min read
Who Prills Ammonium Nitrate Now?
CF Industries will rebuild its idled Yazoo City complex without a prilling line. The site returns in the first half of 2027 making solution, ammonia and DEF, and North America loses the solid ammonium nitrate it used to make there.
Subscribers - Aug 95 min read
When Nameplate Becomes an Opinion
Kronos told the SEC it moved its own definition of a normal production rate. Lanxess told analysts it is running below 70% and taking nothing out. Plus STERIS trades two chemistry plants for one, a Rhine force majeure that never existed, and a Kaub recovery that lasted two days.
Subscribers - Aug 93 min read
Six Times the Price, No Extra Sulfur
Tampa's third-quarter molten sulphur contract settled at a record $705 a long ton, six times where the contract started 2025. US sulfur output over the same stretch has not left a 7% band, because no plant in the country was built to make it.
Free - Aug 84 min read
Three Price Increases, One Million Dollars
Chemours has put three global TiO2 price increases into effect since December, and its pigment segment earned one million dollars more this quarter than it did a year ago. Tronox sold 18% more pigment and made 22% less money. The increases are landing, which is exactly why more of them are coming.
Subscribers - Aug 84 min read
The New API Capacity Is Sixteen Years Old
America makes 15% of its own patented active ingredient by volume, and the 100% duty on the rest started biting on July 31. One of the world's largest contract API sites is a Lafayette, Indiana plant Evonik bought from Eli Lilly on New Year's Day 2010, and it just took another $100 million into reactors that are already standing.
Free - Aug 87 min read
The Mine Comes Back Before the Plant Does
Tronox spent eighteen months taking pigment capacity out. On Wednesday it restarted a smelting furnace instead, and told the market that TiO2 prices go up again in the third quarter. The 136,000 tonnes of pigment are not coming back with the furnace, and nothing in the capacity tables will ever show that the furnace left.
Subscribers - Aug 75 min read
The Creosote Comes From Denmark Now
Koppers took $164.6 million of impairment against its Stickney coal tar still on Thursday, and the word conditional came off the closure. Two plants are left in the group and neither of them is in this hemisphere, so the pitch, creosote and naphthalene arrive by ship from the fourth quarter.
Subscribers - Aug 74 min read
How the Fiber Chain Finished Its Closure Wave
US artificial and synthetic fiber capacity is down 29% since 2019 and the plants still standing run at 98%. Synthetic rubber has given up 4% of its capacity and runs at 57%. Both sit inside the 72.1% the Fed printed for chemicals.
Free - Aug 75 min read
Barry Took the Plant Next Door
Cabot shut its Barry fumed silica plant in the same quarter its fumed silica volumes rose, because the feedstock came by pipeline from the Dow unit that closed. Plus Trinseo's storm, Koppers' $215.8m, an $850m DMSO deal, and a Rhine that finally turned.
Subscribers - Aug 64 min read
Who Still Rebuilds a Carbide Furnace?
Alzchem took an electric arc furnace apart this year, wore roughly EUR 10m to do it, and grew its first-half EBITDA 14% anyway. The furnace sits at the top of a chain that now ends in a US government contract and a site in South Carolina.
Free - Aug 66 min read
The Rhine Is Taking Whole Chains Now
Four force majeure letters in three weeks, and two of them sit on the same molecule. BASF declared on surfactants Wednesday; the plasticizer letter went out July 16, and the phthalic anhydride behind those plasticizers went out July 31. None of it is a plant problem.
Subscribers - Aug 64 min read
Nineteen Million, Twice
Orion's rubber carbon black book earned the same $19 million in two straight quarters while its specialty book nearly doubled. Same plants, same feedstock, same oil. The only thing that changed in January was the contract, and Cabot's numbers say the same thing.
Subscribers - Aug 54 min read
What Loads at Seventeen Centimetres?
The Kaub gauge printed 17 centimetres this afternoon, the level the forecasts had for Saturday. Germany's waterways administration publishes a load factor down to 40 centimetres and no further, so here is what the number actually measures and which part of it reaches your invoice.
Free - Aug 55 min read
The Footnote Is Where the Tonnes Went
Mosaic idled Faustina completely and put Bartow at 40% of rate, and said so in the fourth sentence of a cost-of-goods paragraph. Westlake now subtracts its own closed plants from its own volume comparison. Chemours guided next year's capital to two fifths of depreciation. Everything that moved since Monday, and the gauge at Kaub reading 20 centimetres while it did.
Subscribers - Aug 56 min read
How Gladbeck Outlived Its Own Closure Notice
INEOS said a year ago it would permanently close its 1954 phenol site in the Ruhr. On the same date this year it deferred the restart meant to replace it, so Gladbeck keeps running and 680,000 tonnes stay cold at Antwerp.
Subscribers - Aug 44 min read
Why the Adhesive Stays in Maryland
Syensqo just broke ground on 30% more structural adhesive capacity at a Maryland plant it has run since the Cytec days, in the same quarter its composite business posted the best numbers in its history. The siting decision was made years ago by somebody else's qualification file.
Free - Aug 44 min read
The Five Quarters Celanese Just Bought
A First Amendment filed this afternoon pushes the leverage covenant on Celanese's $1.75bn revolver out five quarters and lifts the terminal level from 3.5x to 4.0x. The same filing day carried a finished nylon 6,6 optimization, a closed Korean compounding plant, and a Belgian tow site still on its way out.
Subscribers - Aug 46 min read
How a Contract Round Becomes a Plant Closure
Cabot sold 5% more carbon black in the June quarter and earned 24% less on it. The calendar-2026 customer agreements did that, and the answer the board picked was a plant in Argentina, lines in the Netherlands, and no published tonnage for either.
Subscribers - Aug 35 min read
Who Tells You a Plant Went Down?
Olin's vinyl chloride monomer plant at Freeport stopped in the second quarter, took $40.1 million out of the segment, and is still running at reduced rates. No announcement anywhere. Everything that moved since Thursday, plus the tonnage question Celanese answers tomorrow night.
Subscribers - Aug 37 min read
The Phosgene Plant That Didn't Close
In March, VanDeMark filed a WARN notice for a May 25 shutdown of the largest merchant phosgene plant in the United States. The plant is still there. What that does to the removal column, and to anyone who requalified away in the spring.
Subscribers - Aug 34 min read
Sixty-One Percent at the Cracker
US petrochemical producer prices rose 61% in five months. By the time that shock reached basic inorganics it was worth 4%, and the front end has already turned over while the back end is still climbing.
Free - Aug 26 min read
What the Rhine Takes Before It Takes Ethylene
LyondellBasell declared force majeure on its Wesseling butadiene unit on July 16, when the Kaub gauge averaged 45 centimetres. The river has been lower every day since July 28, the letter is still open, and the August contract settled fifty euros down anyway.
Subscribers - Aug 24 min read
Nobody Closed a Helium Plant
Six new American helium operations started up in 2025 and the federal posted price fell 15%. A third of world production went behind a force majeure anyway, and the cost is reaching your site through a line your contract price never touches.
Subscribers - Aug 24 min read
Everything at Bay City Feeds Something Else
OXEA approved an oxo expansion in Texas on July 9 with no tonnage and no capital figure attached. The number that makes it real is Air Liquide's, and the customer for the biggest output stream is already operating on the same fence line.
Free - Aug 14 min read
The Plant Yara Bought Instead of Building
On June 30 Yara walked away from the ammonia assets inside Air Products' Louisiana complex because the returns did not clear its bar. Two days later it paid $1.3 billion for a Texas City plant that is still in commissioning, and priced per annual tonne that was the cheapest capacity on its list.
Free - Aug 15 min read
The Plant That Took Eight Years to Pick a Country
Covestro announced a world-scale MDI train for Baytown in 2018, paused it twice, and left the location open. On June 30 it chose Shanghai, six weeks after its North American MDI book went to force majeure.
Subscribers - Aug 16 min read
Closures Come With Tonnages. Additions Come With Dollars.
The first monthly edition of the ledger: thirteen capacity entries dated in July 2026, from Barry to Brindisi to the Louisiana complex that got cancelled. Four of six removals came with a capacity figure. One of six additions did.
Subscribers - Jul 314 min read
Why Europe Only Gets Seventy Percent
LyondellBasell guided its European polyolefin assets to 70% for the third quarter and its North American ones to 85%. The fifteen points between those numbers are where the next European closure comes from, and the company has already booked the charge on one of them.
Subscribers - Jul 314 min read
The Twenty Thousand Tonnes Nobody Has to Build
Eastman's Kingsport methanolysis plant is running above 90% yield, its recycled-polyester revenue doubled in the half, and management says incremental projects take it to 130,000 tonnes. New US capacity arriving without a groundbreaking.
Free - Jul 316 min read
The Closure That Never Gets Announced
Huntsman spent $30 million on its plants last quarter and depreciated $77 million of them. MDI prices rose across all three regions in the same quarter, which is the part that should worry anyone buying it.
Subscribers - Jul 303 min read
Thirty-Five Days With One TDI Plant
Wanhua took BorsodChem's 250,000 tonne TDI line down for annual maintenance on July 17. Europe used to keep enough spare plants to absorb that, and then it closed 300,000 tonnes of them.
Free - Jul 305 min read
Dow Restarted a Cracker and Arkema Sold Less Acrylic
Yesterday BASF told us European demand came back. This morning Arkema printed group volumes down 1.8% and acrylic monomer volumes down 9.7%, while Dow spent the quarter firing an idled Dutch cracker back up. Everything that moved this week, plus what lands in the next 36 hours.
Subscribers - Jul 305 min read
Air Products Is Now Selling the Plant It Was Building
The $2.9 billion Louisiana write-off landed in today's numbers, and with it a capital rule: about $1.5 billion a year for traditional industrial gas, against roughly $5 billion a year since 2022. If your site needs an on-site plant before 2030, the queue in front of you just changed shape.
Subscribers - Jul 294 min read
Who Builds a New Chemical Plant in Germany Right Now?
UPM's Leuna biorefinery is selling wood-derived industrial sugars in volume, lignin fillers start this quarter, and the glycols are specified as drop-in. A 1.275 billion euro plant in Saxony-Anhalt, running.
Free - Jul 296 min read
The Quarter European Chemicals Stopped Shrinking
EU chemical production went from minus 3.6% in the first quarter to plus 1.5% in the second, and BASF's half-year report says the demand arrived through the hole Hormuz left. Europe spent three years removing the plants that would have absorbed it.
Subscribers - Jul 294 min read
How an Ammonia Turnaround Reaches Your CO2 Contract
Producer prices for carbon dioxide are up 82% since 2019 against 54% for the industrial gas complex it sits inside, and the two lines moved in opposite directions this half. The gas nobody builds a plant to make is repricing faster than the ones they do.
Subscribers - Jul 283 min read
Your Gas Supplier Is Building for Someone Else
Air Liquide's half-year landed this morning. Electronics took more than a third of a record 2.9 billion euros in investment decisions, the pipeline business that sits inside chemical plants shrank, and one of five announced US plants serves a chemical site.
Free - Jul 285 min read
Three Plants Stopped Being Announcements This Week
Barry went cold inside Dow's quarter, Sakra runs its last days, and the Alabama cut has a number on a state form. Plus three Gulf-driven supply failures and the benzene print that tells you how long they last.
Subscribers - Jul 287 min read
How Low Water Curtails a Plant That Never Stopped
The Rhine gauge at Kaub is within a few centimetres of an all-time low, three months early, and barge freight to Karlsruhe has almost tripled since June. What that does to anything you buy from above the chokepoint.
Subscribers - Jul 276 min read
Why the Ethane Advantage Stops at Benzene
The Hormuz reopening lasted three weeks on the water. US crackers run on ethane and never touched Middle East naphtha, which is exactly why the aromatics half of your book is the exposed half.
Subscribers - Jul 274 min read
If Everyone Is Closing Plants, Why Is Capacity Still Rising?
US chemical capacity utilization fell to 72.1% in June, the weakest print since the December 2022 freeze. The closures are real, and the Fed's capacity line has still gone up every month for almost six years.
Subscribers - Jul 273 min read
A Derivatives Plant Is Only as Good as Its Monomer
Covestro closed on the former Vencorex site at Freeport, Texas on July 1. The plant has made Tolonate since 1988; what changed is who makes the HDI going into it.
Free - Jul 265 min read
Fluoropolymers Were Supposed to Be the Safe Business
AGC proposes to shut its Hillhouse PTFE and ETFE plant by year end, four straight loss years into the chemistry every producer calls defensive. What that leaves for anyone buying Fluon in the West.
Subscribers - Jul 215 min read
The Sixty-Day Head Start
A WARN notice lands in a state database weeks before the press release. The methodology brief on the earliest public closure signal we know of.
Subscribers - Jul 174 min read
A Sourcing Manager's Guide to Who Pays the Tariff
Washington finalized a 25% tariff on most Brazilian goods. Whether you pay it or the exporter does comes down to how much slack is left in US capacity.
Subscribers - Jul 145 min read
How a Dead Cracker Shuts the Plant Behind It
The Versalis cracker at Brindisi went cold in March 2025. Sixteen months later the polypropylene line behind it followed, and the same case is being argued across Europe.
Subscribers - Jul 104 min read
Who Absorbs Barry?
Dow's Barry closure takes roughly a third of Europe's basic-siloxane capacity off the map. We trace where 150,000 tonnes a year has to reappear, and what it does to the plants that take it.
Subscribers - Jul 73 min read
Why We Started Counting Closures
Closures are outrunning expansions in US specialty chemicals. The launch brief on the database we built to keep score, and the feedstock math behind it.
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The nomination letter arrives either way.
Every closure, curtailment, and force majeure in US specialty chemicals, translated into what it does to the products you buy.