On August 8, disperse dyes rose across the board, with Disperse Black 300% approaching the RMB 30,000 per ton mark. This came just weeks after two rounds of price adjustments in July, signaling an accelerated pace of dye price hikes. Yet the textile market remains in its traditional off-season, with dyeing mills operating at only about 60% capacity on average. This "off-season price hike" reflects a deep game between upstream supply bottlenecks and weak downstream demand.
Background
The direct driver of this round of dye price increases is the surge in the price of the key intermediate, reductive material (2-amino-4-acetamidoanisole). Public data shows that this raw material stood at RMB 25,000 per ton at the end of 2025, but by March 2026 it had jumped to RMB 70,000-100,000 per ton, a rise of nearly 300% in just a few months. By mid-year, the price had stabilized at a record high of RMB 100,000 per ton. Reductive material is essential for producing black, blue, and purple disperse dyes, and its cost share is extremely high. A multiple-fold increase in raw material costs means that if dye manufacturers keep prices unchanged, their profits would be severely eroded.
Supply-side rigidity is the underlying logic behind the sustained price rise. Domestic compliant production capacity for reductive material is only 50,000-60,000 tons, highly concentrated among three companies: Zhejiang Longsheng, Runtu, and Ningxia Zhongsheng New Technology. The industry has very limited room for capacity expansion, and supply elasticity is weak. Once downstream demand picks up slightly, supply-demand imbalance directly pushes up raw material quotes. Meanwhile, H-acid, a key intermediate for reactive dyes, also faces tight supply. H-acid production involves highly polluting processes such as sulfonation and nitration; under environmental regulations, outdated capacity has been phased out. Current effective capacity is less than 60,000 tons, with a chronic supply gap of over 10%. The simultaneous price increases of reductive material and H-acid create a dual cost squeeze, significantly reducing resistance to dye price hikes.
Industry Impact
With dye costs nearly doubling, pressure is directly transmitted to midstream dyeing and printing mills. Their current operating situation is quite passive: the traditional off-season is prominent, with average capacity utilization around 60%. Large orders are scarce, and most enterprises rely on sample development and small trial orders, limiting revenue. More critically, the industry's supply-demand logic has fundamentally changed. In the past, during peak seasons, dyeing mills leveraged capacity advantages to hold pricing power, with rush fees and fabric premiums being common. Now, conventional fabrics are increasingly commoditized, small scattered orders are being consolidated, and order resources are concentrating among top key accounts. Most dyeing mills have highly homogeneous production processes and lack differentiated competitiveness. The market has gradually shifted to a buyer's market, making it difficult for them to unilaterally raise dyeing fees when facing major clients.
Only a few high-end fabric-focused dyeing mills with stable quality control and premium client resources can independently raise processing fees. In response to rising dye costs, some mills have already issued notices of dyeing fee increases to offset cost losses. However, in the off-season, downstream demand is weak, and major clients have low acceptance of fee hikes, making downward cost transmission difficult. Most small and medium-sized mills can only absorb the price difference themselves, and prolonged losses are unsustainable.
In the short term, with weak market demand, downstream fabric and garment enterprises have few orders and have not yet felt significant cost pressure from higher dyeing fees. Most mills prioritize retaining core clients and have not yet implemented large-scale fee increases. But the low-price, cost-bearing model cannot last long. From September to October, the textile industry will enter the traditional stocking season for peak demand. Downstream garment and foreign trade orders will be released intensively, and the accumulated cost pressure from dyes and intermediates will be transmitted layer by layer from upstream to downstream. At that point, comprehensive dyeing fee increases will become a common industry choice, raising costs across the entire textile chain—from fabric mills to garment brands to end consumers—all becoming cost bearers in this round of dye price hikes.