Since late August, price increases in the domestic industrial-grade acetonitrile market have been gradually widening. This week, Zhenhai Petrochemical's auction settled at 9,400 yuan/ton, up 700 yuan/ton from the previous week, after which the spot market was further pushed higher to 9,800 yuan/ton, representing an 11.4% increase compared with the same period last week. Overall supply remains tight at present, with byproduct-method producers yet to fully resume operations. Meanwhile, consumption in the high-purity segment continues to grow, particularly with prep-grade acetonitrile products remaining in persistent shortage, which in turn keeps stimulating the market to probe higher.
Recently, some byproduct-method producers have gradually resumed operations, including Liaoning Jinfai and Sierbang, among others, with several production lines coming back online. Overall operating rates among byproduct-method producers have now recovered to around 76%, up from the previous level of below 70%. However, given that the acetonitrile production process is relatively lengthy, the incremental output from byproduct-method producers remains limited for now, though it will gradually increase over the longer term. Currently, acetonitrile inventory at byproduct-method producers remains at a low level, with no notable increase in external sales volumes. For downstream plants that rely on externally purchased byproduct-method acetonitrile to produce high-purity products, the available supply remains tight.
Although synthetic-method producers continue to operate at relatively high loads, most of them are primarily dedicated to producing high-purity products in tandem, and some export orders also need to be fulfilled this month, leaving extremely limited volumes available for domestic external sales. In addition, Henan Longyu's 10,000-ton synthetic-method acetonitrile unit is scheduled to be shut down for maintenance next week, which will further reduce synthetic-method supply. Moreover, acetic acid—the main feedstock for the synthetic route—has seen sustained price increases recently, providing some support for suppliers' price-firming stance on the cost side.
Beyond persistently tight supply on the production side, demand—led primarily by the peptide industry—has also continued to grow. Since 2025, peptide production capacity has been released in a concentrated manner, and heading into 2026, the peptide API production lines of leading pharmaceutical companies have successively entered ramp-up or full-capacity operation stages. With the explosive growth in global demand for weight-loss drugs, GLP-1 medications have become a major driver of growth in peptide market demand. Orders for representative products such as semaglutide and tirzepatide APIs have continued to increase, and capacity projects invested in by multiple companies in prior years have entered the output stage in the first half of 2026. Prep-grade acetonitrile is required as a solvent during the production of APIs such as semaglutide and tirzepatide, thereby driving corresponding sustained growth in demand. Particularly since the second half of the year, orders from pharmaceutical companies have surged, leading to an overall shortage of prep-grade acetonitrile products.
That said, the associated increase in acetonitrile recovered from peptide production has also provided some countervailing pressure on industrial-grade acetonitrile prices, especially in traditional application fields such as agrochemicals. This is why acetonitrile prices had remained weak for an extended period earlier on—only recently have they risen rapidly in tandem with prep-grade products, driven by continuously tightening supply and expanding order demand. Over the longer term, however, attention must still be paid to the shock and suppression that recovered acetonitrile may exert on the industrial-grade acetonitrile market.
Looking at September as a whole, acetonitrile market prices are expected to maintain an upward probing trend. At present, inventory levels at industrial-grade acetonitrile producers remain low, synthetic-method producers have virtually no external sales volumes available, and although byproduct-method producers are expected to add output in the near term, it will still be difficult for this incremental supply to fully cover expanding order demand and export volumes in the short run. Over the longer term, however, as byproduct-method supply recovers and continued price increases begin to curb consumption in certain traditional downstream sectors, the pace of acetonitrile market price gains will gradually narrow.
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