The disperse dye market is undergoing a sharp price hike driven by cost-side factors. Starting July 21, 2026, Zhejiang Longsheng and Runtu, two major industry players, simultaneously raised prices across their entire product lines. The disperse black 300% series saw a 3,000 yuan per ton increase, while other color series were uniformly raised by 1,000 yuan per ton. This marks the second price adjustment in July, signaling a new upward cycle for disperse dyes.
The Root Cause: Intermediate Price Surge
The fundamental driver behind this round of dye price increases is not short-term market speculation, but a sustained surge in core intermediates. The price of reducing agent, an irreplaceable raw material for producing disperse black and blue dyes, has skyrocketed from 25,000 yuan per ton at the end of 2025 to 70,000-100,000 yuan per ton in March 2026, and has now stabilized at 120,000 yuan per ton in July, an increase of nearly 300%. Another key intermediate, p-nitrochlorobenzene, has jumped from 3,500-3,700 yuan per ton a year ago to 14,000 yuan per ton, also a near-300% surge.
Supply-side tightening is the underlying logic. The production of these intermediates involves high-risk processes and strict environmental regulations, with only 7-8 factories capable of stable mass production nationwide. This year, routine safety and environmental inspections have led to shutdowns for maintenance at several intermediate plants, keeping market supply tight. The lengthy approval and construction cycles for new capacity mean the supply gap cannot be filled in the short term. For dyeing factories in Keqiao, their reserve dye inventories have largely been depleted, and concentrated replenishment demand is further pushing up raw material procurement costs. The cost pressure is being transmitted downstream without a buffer.
Industry Impact: Keqiao's Squeeze
Keqiao, as China's largest production and sales base for chemical fiber fabrics, relies heavily on disperse dyes for dyeing polyester and polyester-spandex fabrics. Black and blue color series account for over half of local dyeing capacity. The differentiated 3,000 yuan per ton increase for disperse black has the most direct impact on conventional fabric processing plants. According to public industry data, a medium-sized dyeing factory sees its monthly dye procurement costs increase by hundreds of thousands of yuan.
The cost pressure extends beyond dyes. Two steam price hikes this year, coupled with the implementation of new peak-valley electricity pricing for industrial and commercial users in Zhejiang in July, have significantly raised electricity costs for high-energy-consumption processes like setting and dyeing. With rising costs for dyes, energy, auxiliaries, and labor, profit margins are being squeezed. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that in the first quarter of 2026, total profits for 2,036 above-scale printing and dyeing enterprises nationwide fell 16.1% year-on-year, with the industry's loss ratio reaching 43.96%. The situation for small and medium-sized dyeing factories in Keqiao closely mirrors this national trend.
Meanwhile, the Keqiao Textile City is in the traditional low season for fabrics, with order structures shifting significantly. Large orders of ten thousand meters have decreased sharply, replaced by small orders of a few hundred meters and re-dyeing/color correction orders. Frequent washing of dyeing vessels and idle machine time have increased dyeing losses by 10%-20% year-on-year. Market prices are highly transparent, giving strong bargaining power to secondary wholesalers and large out-of-town customers. If dyeing factories raise processing fees even slightly, they risk losing orders to cheaper competitors or even to production capacity shifting to Southeast Asia. Many Keqiao factory owners admit that during the low season, they can only absorb the rising dye costs to retain orders, operating at thin margins or even a loss. Shutting down would still incur equipment depreciation and fixed labor costs, leaving them in a dilemma.
While upstream textile exports show resilience, with China's textile and apparel exports totaling $116.7 billion in the first five months of 2026, a slight 0.1% year-on-year increase, the incremental orders are mostly for low-cost conventional fabrics, which cannot support a simultaneous increase in dyeing fees. Spot merchants at the textile city also report strong price pressure from downstream apparel brands. The price increases for greige fabrics and finished fabrics lag behind the dye price hikes, squeezing margins for intermediate traders.