Entering September, domestic industrial-grade acetonitrile prices have accelerated upward, with a single-week gain of nearly RMB 1,000/mt. The latest market quotation has reached RMB 11,900/mt, up RMB 2,600/mt from early September, an increase of 28%; the current price is also the highest since early 2023. Supply-side increments have fallen short of expectations, while demand-side growth has been prominent, leading to continued tightness in spot resources and spurring the acetonitrile market to rise rapidly and persistently.
Demand growth is the main driver of this rapid market rally. Based on current understanding, it is mainly concentrated in the downstream peptide sector. Demand for drugs represented by semaglutide, tirzepatide and similar products is robust, significantly increasing consumption of preparation-grade acetonitrile required for API production, which in turn drives rapid growth in industrial-grade acetonitrile consumption. According to relevant statistics, in the first half of 2026, tirzepatide sales reached USD 27.693 billion, while the full semaglutide series totaled about USD 17.5 billion; combined, the two drugs generated nearly USD 50 billion in half a year, directly driving upstream API demand. In particular, semaglutide’s core patent in China expired in March 2026, and patents in many overseas countries have also expired successively. Generic drug filings and commercial orders have begun to scale up, directly boosting API demand.
Meanwhile, since August, overall inventories in the industrial-grade acetonitrile industry have remained persistently low. By-product-process producers had earlier continued to operate at relatively low loads of below 70%; major East China plants such as Sierbang, Zhenhai Refining & Chemical, Shanghai SECCO and Zhejiang Petrochemical ran at low load for an extended period. Since September, there has been some load recovery, but the actual short-term supply increase remains limited. Sierbang is gradually restarting three units; Zhenhai Refining & Chemical is expected to gradually return to 80–90% load; and Zhejiang Petrochemical, after shutting one line last month and then restarting it, shut another line in early September, with restart timing yet to be determined. Current comprehensive estimates show that the overall incremental supply of by-product-process acetonitrile is quite limited, with gradual and more notable increases possible in the second half of the month.
In addition, after entering September, besides demand growth in emerging sectors such as peptides, demand from traditional pesticides and other pharmaceutical sectors has also improved somewhat. Buy-on-rising sentiment has further prompted downstream users and traders to follow up with restocking, while export orders have also increased significantly.
Going forward, acetonitrile market prices are expected to continue rising at least until October, with demand maintaining periodic concentrated releases. On the supply side, increments may still fall short of expectations, as worsening losses in acrylonitrile products may constrain by-product-process producers’ operating rates. In the longer term, attention should be paid to the sustainability of preparation-grade acetonitrile demand and the commissioning of new industrial-grade acetonitrile capacity, including the by-product-process Tianjin Nangang project and synthetic-process producer Nantong Liyang’s 30,000 mt/y acetonitrile unit. The release of new capacity may alleviate supply tightness to some extent, thereby curbing the continued price increase in acetonitrile.
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